Ways of Dying in 1665

[TheScarlettPimpernel]

So I'm just copying out a weekly Bill of Mortality from London, 1665 (don't ask!)

Look at some of the ways of dying - anyone care to hazard a guess at what some of them might be?!

Plague - 7165 (IN A WEEK!!!)
Childbed - 42 - just goes to show, it's all very well bemoaning medicalised childbirth/interventions/CSs but look at the alternative
Grief - 3 (Not bloody surprising - wonder what the actual medical cause was?)
Griping in the Guts - 51!
Rising of the Lights - 11 (WTF was that then? In offal, are the lights the lungs, right?)
Kingsevil - 2 (Don't ask me how I know this, but I believe this to be scrofula)
Wormes - 15 (OH EM GEE, you could die of worms )
Impostume - 11 (what?!)
Frighted - 3 (three people scared to death in a week )
Winde - 3 (Oh yeah. FARTED TO DEATH)

I realise I am a bit morbid

I KNOW! I WAS TRYING TO BE AMUSING

(@ Thumbwitch not Stratters)

oh Ariel I like the way it says 'Originally published Samhain 1997' at the top

Scout as far back as that? Wow. Amazing how surgery could be incredibly sophisticated thousands of years ago and the West didn't catch up for centuries. I saw a programme once about the first nose-job and it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago, in India, using a leaf

I may well drop you a line sometime :)

Yowch to the idea of palate repair without anaesthetic, just thinking of the anaesthetic jabs I've had in the roof of my mouth, I can just imagine!

Rowan tree - protective against witches; not sure about yew and witch association. (Sorry, just needed to expand my previous comment).

Tympany - bet that has to do with the belly swelling up and being tight as a drum (timpani), eh?

I didn't notice that! So it's by a Pagan Celtic Type!

This thread is like the weirdest stream of consciousness there has ever been

You don't get this shit on NetHuns

'The Yew tree, or Yew wood, the Tree ogham Idho , is the link to spiritual guidance through your ancestors, guides and guardians in the Otherworld. The Yew is here to remind us that there are other levels of existence beyond this material plane. By understanding the illusionary nature of the life we have created for ourselves, we can live our lives more consciously. Often death is fraught with a sense of loss, but the Yew can teach us to see death as a form of transformation and that it is never final.'

Clearly we can all learn a lot from the Yew.

I am going to nominate this thread for classics as it is too interesting to die out.

but Scout, death is a form of transformation and it is never final.
A Yew just told me.

A tree does all that? Wow!

I'm just off to commune with our local yew.

A thread in Classics!

What does Samhain mean??

I do remember there is an AGatha Christie where someone dies of 'taxin' poisoning which I think was from a tea made of yew berries.

Amazing how easy it would be to kill someone if you were truly determined - I mean, there's belladonna growing in the verge just outside our London flat!

I prefer holly trees, to be honest - mind you, they have dodgy associations as well, I seem to remember...

Samhain is the Celtic festival of the New Year I believe, coinciding with Halloween?

Samhain is Hallowe'en

I still wonder what people will be saying as they shake their heads and look at our lifestyles, and wonder however we could not have known that (for instance) emanations from wireless computers were fiddling with our DNA, so that future generations will be born with odd openings between their toes, or something....

I am convinced that botox is going to prove disastrous in some way. There is no way you can go injection botulism without effects, even if years hence.

Ah, gotcha (re Samhain).

Lol at Ariel talking to trees.

Silly Billy.

I do like tree mythology.

We went to the maritime museum at Bucklers Hard in the summer and the best thing was a 'tree walk' in the woods with a most informative leaflet telling you everything you wanted to know about trees, like what they were used for and which ones had evil spirits and how many it took to make a warship. Bucklers Hard is a bit overpriced as a whole but the tree walk alone was worth the money.

Agree Tsp I suspect artificial sweeteners will be banned one day.

TSP - a fairly easy way to kill someone is to make apple pie but leave the pips in. The pips contain amygdalin, which, when oxidised, releases cyanide (which is why you should always remove them before cooking if you don't want to kill someone!) Eat enough cyanide pie and the victim will die. Some doctor knocked off his wife that way, iirc.

This thread is like the weirdest stream of consciousness there has ever been

I hear that quite a lot.

Scout - bloody aspartame and acesulphame K should be banned now, ditto that chlorinated sugar one, can't think of its name, newish thing, supposedly "natural"...

That's interesting Thumb

Tree walk sounds amazing...