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

how many pies would it take?

I wonder that too Scarlett.

The only place we can keep our wireless router is under our bed, right under our heads. My MIL is convinced we're going to end up with brain cancer. And who knows really?

Apparently, although yew trees in churchyards were used and planted for making longbows, there are lots of churches where the trees far pre-date the buildings, suggesting they were sites of pagan ritual.

Btw, dreaming - sending you good vibes for the final push. I am procrastinating from mine too - and very pleasant it is!

Tree walk was so simple. Just some plastic labels on the trees and a good leaflet.

I read about someone who loved apple pips and saved a cupful up to eat as a treat.

It killed them.

just how many cooked pips would you need?

If MNHQ don't put this in classics, you can ask for it to be moved anyway, TSP - somewhere that doesn't die in 90 days. Other Subjects might be an option, or General Health (for the lulz )

Ariel - just worked out what your amusing comment was about [slow] - sorry! was being OTT in teacher mode again

My Dad used to show us how to peel apple pips and eat them - they tasted of almonds, he said. OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DID, DAD! IT'S CYANIDE!!!!!

I have ONLY JUST REMEMBERED THAT!

xposted with all you incipient murderous types interested in apple pies - I don't know exactly, never tried it!

Perhaps if you had woodland mushrooms first, with some green potatoes, fried rhubarb leaves and then the applepip pie, it would make certain that it worked first time? And confuse the toxicologists for about 10 seconds

TSP - it's ok, if you eat them raw it's unlikely to have hurt you because they go into the acidic stomach environment before the cyanide can be released :) The cooking effect releases the cyanide in the pip. Amygdalin is supposed to be a protective agent against cancer, btw, so your Dad was probably doing you a favour!
INcidentally, this is why you should never eat bitter almonds as well - they may contain cyanide.

Thanks Jericho!

How far along are you? Good vibes right back at ya

I'm supposed to submit in 3 months
Definitely should not be procrastinating! Ah feck it...

Shit, I eat apple pips!

Am taking a break fromthe fascinating thread, given I have lost three hours to it!

'How far along are you' always sounds like pregnancy to me. I am in my third year and hoping to finish by September (though my last meeting suggested that may be optimistic ).

I am wanting to go back and work on something much more gruesome now, though!

Dreaming and Jericho - I'm sure you've thought of this already - but have you got your examiners agreed?

I ask because I didn't start looking until the last couple of months, and my supervisor and my uni were both SHITE, and I had to wait SEVEN MONTHS for my Viva, instead of the stipulated three. The wait was horrendous especially as all around me people who submitted months after me and are nowhere near as smart kept getting their PhDs all over the place. Mine is now arranged for 29 Feb, 48 hours after I get back from 2 weeks abroad

Anyways good luck to you both and enjoy it. . . you might find (like me) that the euphoria of finishing lasts about 3 days and then you plunge into the melancholy of someone for whom life no longer has any real meaning

Don't eat too many apple seeds though - apparently my remembered info is a little off and if you eat enough of them they can produce enough cyanide during digestion to harm you. And don't even think about it with other tree-fruit seeds.

I Love this thread but have to go to bed because it's gone 1:20am and I am Tired.

Scarlett how rotten for you.

No, my examiners have not yet been appointed and my planned end date of September would be for finishing writing, not for having the viva done. I am happy to wait on the viva as I have some teaching lined up for Autumn term.

I did hear of someone waiting a whole year, though!

thumb - eek! I take the warning.

Doesn't bitter almond contain quite a lot of cyanide, too?

Farewell Thumb

A year! I would DIE. Or kill someone. With apple-seed pie

I really am going now for a bit. Thanks for playing with me!

Don't eat too many apple seeds because A TREE WILL GROW IN YOUR STOMACH, as any fool knows.

Peach pits-they also are a handy source of cyanide. The bit in the middle of the pit.

at aye.

Disturbingly, there is a trendy recipe I saw for steeping peach pits in Marsala - doesn't sound like a great idea!

Incidentally, if you get the seed pods from those pretty, hair-stemmed red poppies (Opium poppies), let them go semi-dry and then slash the sides and put them to steep in a jar of vodka, you can get yourself monumentally high/dead.

A mate of mine at university was an organic chemist and he tried this, but only drank a tiny sip and just spent the evening having very, very strange dreams.

Bitter almonds contain the most cyanide of any fruit pit. And about 50 bitter almonds in one go would be enough to kill a full grown man. Apricot kernels = next down in cyanide content, I think.

Mostly when we eat apple pips, we don't bite them and are therefore protected from the cyanide because we can't digest the casing; but if you bite them you break the casing and allow the kernel to be digested --> cyanide release.

Oh dear, I love apple pips. I eat 3-4 apples a day. Maybe it's low grade permanent cyanide poisoning I have, not asthma.

these are opium poppies, not the hairy stemmed big reds (oriental poppies), Jericho. Mind you, I don't know if you can still get opium out of the orientals as well, quite possibly! Or something similar.

Oh damn. I chew apple pips because they taste nice.

Mind you I have been doing this since childhood and I eat about 4-6 apples a day. Am I going to pop my clogs sometime soon?!