List of causes of Death from 1632

[Peteryougit]

I find this sort of thing really interesting. I’m sorry, I don’t have a direct link so I don’t know which region it’s from - l hope the photo attached okay.

”Rising of the lights” - any ideas?

Thats what happened to me. I was 2. I was so traumatised afterwards I thought every time my mother left she wouldn't come back. This went on for years and years. My parents were not allowed to visit me at all.

Oh, just 2. My God.

The trauma is unimaginable.

It’s coming out now with my dad. He’s in a care home with Dementia. He’s often inconsolable crying for his mum asking for where she’s gone and if his throat will hurt again. Or he will cry when I try to leave, asking me when I am going to take him home to his brothers, saying he’s sorry if he’s been naughty.

80 odd years on and it’s still there. I can’t imagine what it did to his 5 year old development. It’s heartbreaking.

My aunt spent months in a tb hospital in the 30's 40's. One of those with the open wards so if it rained or snowed the patients had tarpaulins put over the beds. Mom remembers going on day trips to visit her once every couple of months.

It affected my aunt for the rest of her life.

Parents being able to stay in hospital with children is really a modern thing. When I was a medical student in the 80s it was still very much the norm for children to be alone overnight, and when i started my anaesthetic career in the 90s, having parents present when a child was being anaesthetised was still quite controversial and quite a lot of my older colleagues refused. Things changed fairly radically over the first decade or so of my career and it is east to forget how recently separation of sick children from their parents was seen as completely acceptable.
My Dad, born in the late 1920s, used to tell stories of quite a prolonged hospital stay when he was primary school aged. He had something infectious - scarlet fever if my memory serves me right - and was in hospital for weeks and not allowed visitors at all. Though the thing he complained most about was that all the toys and books he'd been sent to keep him amused during his convalescence were destroyed when he left as it was deemed an infection risk to take anything home.

I was 6 months in children's hospital then another 3 in a convalescent home when I was a child in the 60's. Must have cost my parents a fortune in petrol to visit every day, as the convalescent home was a good 15 Mike's from home.

I remember a sibling was born when I was still in and I thought they were my replacement at first. Still love being in hospital now though.😊

Fully enjoyed reading every bit of that thread! I went down a rabbit hole on google too 😅.. I should probably get back to doing some work!

I was in hospital for a week at three years old with my parents visiting every day. Worse the parents of the boy in the next bed who was seven, did not visit him once while I was there. My parents felt sorry for him and brought in little treats for him.

I remember reading the end of ‘Clarissa’ and feeling rather irritated by the non-specific nature of her illness.

Although there are quite a lot of diseases, like leukaemia or kidney failure or autoimmune disorders, that have very vague ‘failure to thrive’ type symptoms even in their final stages. It’s worth saying too, that severe childhood infections often left a legacy of heart and lung damage, which tend to manifest as general weakness/lack of stamina.

My sibling broke their leg at the age of 5 & was in traction. And I with suspected appendicitis aged 8. The 1970’s. My parents were only allowed to visit once a day.

When youngest (12) had appendicitis I didn’t leave their side in hospital. Can’t imagine the trauma of leaving a 5year old. But then that was the norm so maybe we felt differently.

In 1975, when I was ten, I spent two weeks in an adult ward as the major surgery l had (a radical mastoidectomy) was far too big for the children’s hospital. My mother visited each day but was not allowed to come on the day of the operation. There was no allowance made whatsoever for the fact that I was a child. Nothing was explained to me. I had never heard of bedpans, never mind the fact that I would be expected to use one for two days after the operation. I was terrified of having the stitches out but, fortunately, l had to go under anaesthetic a week later and the stitches were removed at the same time. The anaesthetics themselves were a much bigger ordeal then, too. It was how things were and we accepted it but, looking back, it was not good practice.

My Mum was in a place like that when she was 6 because her Mum had died of TB even though she didn't have it herself. A lot of the old London Nursery schools had big sliding doors all along one side so they were open to the air all the time even when children had their nap. It was because of TB and other diseases that were rife in those areas in the early 20th century. (And some people now complain if the cleaner opens the window for a bit,)

www.rachelmcmillannursery.co.uk/Gallery/Archive/

@Peteryougit that's heartbreaking.

My mother seemed to be permanently terrified all her life and I think it stemmed from things that happened after her mother and baby sister died of TB in the early 30s.

Incredible to think that nobody considered that a very young child might get terribly upset in a strange hospital ward without a parent anywhere to be seen for days/weeks on end. Awful.

To be honest, I think 'wuthering heights' itself sounds like it could have been one of the descriptions for cause of death back then!

Another aspect of children's medicine from the past, babies up to around 12-18 months were often operated on without anaesthetic because it was believed they couldn't feel pain. They would be given a muscle relaxant to stop them moving around.

I had a periacetabular osteotomy (open hip surgery) when I was six months old. I didn't have anaesthetic. Even when I asked my mum about it she said it was fine because they gave me "a paralysing medicine" and babies couldn't feel pain "back then" like pain is somehow a modern invention

Anaesthetic only started to be used from the 70s and even then only by some doctors, it wasn't routine for all infant surgeries until the mid-80s. My operation was in '81 with a further surgery in early '82. Apparently when my mum came to collect me from recovery I was taped to a board and my ears were full of tears where they'd fallen down the sides of my face.

@Endwalker thats terribly poignant.

@Peteryougit I didn’t mean to derail your most excellent thread with stories of convalescent home and child cruelty!

The list's fascinating Op and thanks for posting it. It may be bloody difficult getting a Doctor to see you now but at least I feel save from death by Planet 😂

This is heartbreaking and very uncomfortable to read. How absolutely awful 🙁

but at least I feel safe from death by Planet

You didn't hear about Asteroid 2022 RM4 then Darleksatemyshed ?

Frank Mcourt was in isolation in hospital with TB. Around a hundred years ago. Must have been awful

@AdaColeman I heard about it but I couldn't have taken time out to worry about it, my worry diary is already full 🤣

Endwalker that’s so sad to read. 💐

@mackthepony that would have been less than 100 years ago as he went to school with my FIL. Isolation when you had TB was very common. My mothers neighbours in the 1950s were all taken away and sent off to a hospital by the sea as they had TB. My mother's grandfather died from TB and my grandmother was paranoid about it for years and would tell her children not to mention that there had been TB in the family

He had typhoid, not TB and would have been in hospital in the early 1940s (I googled)

I guess it meant swelling of extremities. I have a blood clotting disorder and have had several DVTs which cause swelling and oedema in the legs. People get DVTs for all sorts of reasons (pregnancy being one) which are deadly if untreated so perhaps it could partly be this?