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?

Thanks for sharing OP, this is really interesting.

Of the ways ladies died in literature- I really want to know what books they are!

Does anyone know if fistula is related to tearing in childbirth? I’ve often wondered what state I’d be in with my nearly fourth degree tear without lovely modern medicine.

I don't know, they'd say childbirth then maybe?

but in other terms, it seems very sophisticated to identify fistula in the 1600s so maybe.

I took that list as what women died of in fiction although I may be wrong. I never worked out what Cathy actually died of in Wuthering Heights..

Murdered.

"Lights" is what they call
Lungs in the meat trade.

I’ve heard of “Tissick” something to do with coughing, possibly diphtheria?
Sudden death probably hear attacks, brain bleeds.
The number of women who died following childbirth.

Tisick is coughing so I think all related stuff.

I figured it was that. "Winde" on the other hand?

London but I'm not sure which area.

There were rules around quarantining your household, there's a chapter about it in Wolf Hall where a character dies of a sickness and the rest of the household have to mark their front door to show it and then stay sequestered for 40 days basically waiting to see if they get ill or not.

There are some decent articles online about the laws relating to plague. People would dip money in various things to disinfect it such as vinegar or wine, travelling was banned unless you had paperwork authorising it and certifying you didn't have plague, they lit smoky fires thinking that it was better to breathe the smoke than the plague miasma in the air, they killed loads of cats and dogs because they thought they contributed to it, bodies of victims were removed from homes as quickly as possible and people were paid to go in and do this.

How can you die of thrush? Fascinating. Thanks for sharing OP. I love this sort of thing.

How can you die of thrush?

As PP, I'll bet a lot of these were people with diabetes or other conditions, where the thrush was just the external symptom of something much more serious but (to them, back then) not obvious/known.

Did you all watch Quacks when it was on? Hilarious and informative- a bit like Horrible Histories for grown ups with the lovely Matt Baynton again. Gutted they didn’t do another series.

I would just assume wind (although it must have been bad to die of it). Spelling was variable in those days.

I presume the 'winde', like the 'thrush', was probably where they saw the obvious symptom and ascribed the death to that symptom, rather than the cause, as they didn't have the same in-depth knowledge of how it all fits together that we do now.

For example, somebody might have bowel cancer, which could present on the surface as truly offensive-smelling wind, but it would obviously be the cancer itself that might end up sadly killing you and not just the farts.

Yes that makes sense.

Yes absolutely

My DH is prone to diverticulitis and when he gets that his farts are truly repulsive. I'm sure people used to die of infections like that.

Died of planet???

Brilliant thread thank you.

Currently have walking pneumonia & on my second lot of antibiotics. It would most likely have carried me off. But I had placenta praevia with eldest so would never have made it this far. They also had bilateral quinsy when young.

Thank goodness for modern medicine.

Think it's died because the stars and planets were in the wrong alignment. Basically death unexplained but that was their logic

Lights is still occasionally used for lungs nowadays, but almost always in the context of offal (like "you may choose to feed your cat lights", as I've got in a relatively recent pet care book).

It makes you appreciate modern medicine.

If I'd been around then I'd probably have been:
Killed by appendicitis age 8, but if I survived that
Possibly Killed by an appalling tooth abscess age 24, but if I survived that
Possibly Killed by rising of the lights age 37

And if I survived all that I would have lost the use of a limb age 45.