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 have tons of those in my garden Thumb.

TSP good luck for your viva!!!

Thanks for the tip on the examiners I'm hoping to submit by May and have the viva in September. I don't mind too much if it's delayed though, I imagine it'll take forever to find a job and wouldn't mind staying enrolled whilst I look.

Does it have to be vodka? Only I cannot drink alcohol, I wander what else might work?

Ah, ok, I could have sworn he used the hairy ones - he nicked them out of the botanical gardens. But I may be wrong, or maybe orientals have a bit but not as much?

I'm not recommending the practice, you understand.

Jericho have PM'ed you

frida - I have no idea! In all seriousness I wouldn't try it. It's about as sane as boiling willow bark 'to see if it really works as a painkiller'.

Did I mention my mate was one of this life's biggest and most enthusiastic druggies?

This is one of the best threads I've read on MN. It had only three pages when I started reading and I've been following it most of the morning. Not that I know anythingmuch to contribute.

What is "sweating sickness" or "The Sweat"? I know it was common around the time of Henry VIII but what exactly is it?

OK - re cyanide poisoning - I don't know if this is true for cyanide but it may well be - if you chronically low dose yourself with some poisons, then you raise your tolerance to them because the liver will produce the detoxing enzymes necessary to get rid of them on a more regular basis (see alcohol tolerance, drug tolerance). This is why regular alcohol intake is "safer" than binge drinking, because the liver will hold a pool of detoxing enzymes for the alcohol for a short period; but if it's not used in that time, it'll let it go, meaning that when you need it, the liver has to make all those detoxing enzymes from scratch again, which takes longer, and the alcohol can do more damage while it's waiting.

However, on googling, I got this:
Effects of cyanide consumption
Chronic consumption of cyanide-containing foods eventually can result in ataxia and optic neuropathy. Defective cyanide metabolism due to rhodanese deficiency may explain development of Leber optic atrophy, leading to subacute blindness. Cyanide also may cause some of the adverse effects associated with chronic smoking, such as tobacco amblyopia. (See Prognosis and Presentation.)

So if your eyesight is suffering, pack it in with the apple pips!

Good old Wikipedia: Sweating Sickness

Crikey. Well, my eyesight is fine but I am a bit put off apples ...

oh ha ha ha!! i just bought a load of bramleys to make a pudding for tomorrow, dh had better be VERY nice tonight!

i think as the recession goes on and more and more people look to grow their own fruit and veg, a lot of this old folklore will be remembered, i knew about rhubarb leaves and deadly nightshade berries etc etc because my dm is a very keen gardener - thanks for the thoughts on the yew trees in churchyards, im inclined to think that it must have pagan origins as most religious sites are built over pagan worshiping areas.

megapixels - I'd guess it was malaria, aka the ague - but not sure. MAlaria was endemic in the UK until the 1950s, when we got rid of all the bastard mozzies with DDT, hence they decided to use it all over the vast areas of Africa and other malarial places - but it didn't work because the mozzies were too good at finding other places to breed. UK = far too small for them to evade it (although there is now a risk that it's coming back thanks to global air travel, especially in areas around international airports)

My eyesight is getting worse.

I'm not sure mega, I don't think a conclusion has ever been reached.

I think sweating sickness was a bit mysterious, it appeared, hung around for a couple of hundred years and then just vanished. I don't think they have an explanation for it now.

Didn't they do PMs a bit further back? I'm sure they did to Catherine of Aragon, and found a black growth on her heart (?) but thought it was due to poisoning rather than (presumably) a form of cancer.

well, got that wrong then! Very interesting, not heard of the sweating sickness before - wonder what it was? [curious]

Whilst not totally relevant to this thread, this article on estimating how many people have ever lived is interesting.

I was to read the bit about the life expectancy in some places during the Middle Ages was 12!

I think I'd plump for a form of flu, if pushed. But it seems to have been pretty specific to the UK, and not spread like flu.

Malaria was well known, and wouldn't have been confused with anything else.

Says in Wiki, that they found the growth during the embalming of her body, not a PM.

TheScarlettPimpernel - I think I read it is Porton Down that has a sample of bubonic plague for research purposes.

Indeed, Google finds a news report on BBC website about weapons testying in 1952 accidentally contaminating a fishing boat of Scotland.

OK I have a question re the Sweat and early understanding of disease.

I recently read this YA historical novel in which the intrepid heroine chances upon a bunch of Jesuits in a crypt who are plotting to kill the Queen (for 'tis the sixteenth century) by capturing people and giving them Sweating Sickness by scraping them with manky stuff from other Sweat victims and extracting a liquor from their bodies that they intend to somehow give to the Queen when she comes to visit.
Apart from the slur on the character of the poor Jesuits, does that sound like an authentic way for people of that age to think about disease (IYSWIM)?
(and why are Young Adult historical novels always so over-the-top and bloody implausible? Why are there always witches and magic? Isn't history good enough already without all that ridiculousness? mutter mutter)

Vair interesting thread. I'm very jealous of the folks that study this. I wanted to study the history of science with the OU, but they stopped it :(

[cough]

[points at post of 14:49:49]

[needy]

A "fact" that I can't verify is that it has been said that 50% of all people who ever lived died of malaria. I find that hard to believe, I have to say - but I was taught it in parasitology!

Brilliant thread!

The apple pips thing always worries me a bit. Both DS1 and 2 went through a stage (well, DS2 is still in it) where, if you gave them an apple, they'd just eat it. All of it, apart from the stalk. Woe betide you if you took the core off them, and I always used to forget and miss it. Before you knew it, the entire apple had vanished. Surely most toddlers go through an apple core phase though, and survive?

Ah right, sorry, half-remembered bits there! I always loved Tudor history, but it's been swallowed up by my science degree over the last couple of years.

I'm reading the Phillipa Gregory books at the moment, they're not bad.