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've read Dooms Day Book. I like a nice bit of time travel. The scifi elements are a bit silly (how could they not be?) but the history is good and it is very affecting.

Thanks for the book recommendations. I've ordered Year of Wonders.

I just lost a massive post having finally got to the end of the thread . Short version is:
This is interesting to understand a little of how people thought of medicine
Cancre may be syphilis
Dropsy is oedema, which can be related to heart failure which may have been caused by rheumatic fever at the time

Oh, and I was thinking about winde and wondering if it was more to do with problems breathing, a horse with 'broken wind' can't run due to breathing problems. But this suggests it may be related to infection, maybe some sort of gangrene?

Scarlett-have you read the 'History of the PLague Year' by Daniel Defoe, equally as good, lots of description on how people behaved during the plague (the later one though obviously)

Anyone who is interested in these things you can go on a tour of the Museum of London Archaeological Archive in Hackney www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Collections-Research/LAARC/VisitArchive/LAARCtours.htm or if you have sixth formers they can volunteer there for a few weeks. All the things found in excavations in London are boxed there for researchers.

I was a very nerdy teenager and I was volunteering there when they brought this in (nearly wet my pants with excitement) and they had sacks and sacks of bones from the graveyard in Spitalfields that was being excavated (literally clear plastic sacks full of mixed bones). When we weren't needed we could open any box we wanted-my friend and I once spent a whole quiet day in the bone room looking at the baby bones and examining bones for evidence of disease. We got to do History of Medicine for GCSE so it was a fabulous opportunity, but strangely enough no-one else wanted to hear about syphilitic lesions for very long .

This is also an excellent book albeit not for the fainthearted.

The Museum of London rocks.
I used to take students to LAARC.

Just fascinating.

And I've ordered a few of the book recommendations for some (slightly macabre) half term reading.

I for one would not be around if I lived in pre modern times. If the childhood asthma and chest infections hadn't got me, and if I'd survived Scarlatina at 9 then I'd definitely have succumbed in childbirth as at one point my blood pressure was as low as 60/40 and I needed a transfusion.

Thank God for modern medicine.

I love Anya Seton. There was a biography of Katherine Swynford that came out recently, and I picked it up thinking it would be full of more details ... it was just going over the same ground Seton had done years before and making out it was all new!

I was browsing sites about Eyam and one says that about 14% of the direct descendants of Eyam survivors had immunity to bubonic plague, and this may also be related to an immunity to HIV/AIDS. I didn't understand very well as not a scientific type, but it's interesting isn't it?

Going back to the apple pip thing, we all known the phrase an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and think the message was just about vitamins.

Maybe the message was an apple, not a bag of apples, as a warnng that any more than just an apple and it would make you ill?

Could be, couldn't it Scout.

Actually my dentist said similar - malic acid is actually quite bad for teeth apparently.

And talking of things which killed you then but wouldn,t now, read this court case from1695!

Parthenia Owen of the Parish of St. Giles's in the Fields , Widow , was indicted for Felony and Petty-Treason, in assaulting of her Husband, George Owen , on the 3d of December , in the Sixth Year of King William and Queen Mary, by biting, bruising, and dislocating the first Joynt on the middle Finger of his Right Hand, which swelled afterwards to his Shoulder, and he languished until the 15th of April following, and then died . She alledged, that there happened some Words between her and her Husband, and liking to fall to Blows, she by accident got his Finger into her Mouth, and did bite him as aforesaid. There was Evidence which said, That the Husband spoke well of his Wife when he languished, and that she had nursed him very kindly during that time. So the Jury having considered the whole matter, she was acquitted

OMG just about to read the mastectomy report - gruesome enough - but it is written by Fanny Burney

Parthenia is a fabulous name, almost worth having another DC for. DS was very close to being Damaris.

I read somewhere that the human mouth has more bacteria etc than the human bottom and with the state of 17th century teeth ....

Rd yes - that's one of my favourite books and has been since Iwas a young teenager!I mentioned it upthread somewhere (no reason why you'd've seen it, this is so massive now) - I always remember the man going insane from pain and leaping into the Thames, and the shock of the cold water bursting his buboes and curing him. Sounds unlikely but I'd love to believe that it's true....

WOW to the MoL archaeology archive link. DH will wet himself, as I indeed just did (in fact it was at the MoL that I saw the Bill of Mortality. Am very that you were there when they bought in that coffin!!

Scout I warn you, that account is enough to make anyone pass out in pity and sympathy. I can barely even think about it

Hmm, I'm not sure how dead I would be...

-I had a hernia operated on when I was about three. Dont think this in itself would have killed me in time (?) but would be interested to know if it would have an affect on childbirth later in life and make that potentially more fatal?
-I had tonsillitis A LOT as a child and had a tonsillectomy at about 8. Probably dead a few times over with that.
-I've had chickenpox twice, measles once and mumps once. Four more possible deaths.
-One dose of (symptomless) chlamydia. No idea how dead that would have made me long term, I would guess though that they didnt even know it existed?
-Mild asthma (probably not bad enough to kill me on its own) and several chest infections (though they could)
-Childbirth, ventouse delivery. Most probably dead again.

On the other hand, haha, no pun intended... I have broken four fingers. This could have been a problem except that two were from a car door and two from a fridge. Neither would have existed, so no broken fingers for me

PS Jericho isn't Katherine one of those books that just stays with you forever? I have wanted a carnelian necklace ever since. And have been in love with John of Gaunt for years

Oh, and I had an infected tooth pulled as a teenager, forgot about that one!

though the cunt who gave me chlamydia probably would have had syphilis in the olden days...

Everyone I know who has read Katherine wants to go back in time and shag John of Gaunt.

When i was about ten (50 years ago) i (alone) used to visit my mother on the women's ward in a Birmingham hospital. A shelf ran around the ward on which were jars filled with babies of varying sizes. I remember the disfigurements to this day. They never scared me just fascinated me.

But what did they do when a baby got stuck before there were ventouses or forceps? Did the midwife somehow get her hand in there and yank?

If you'd been in that situation just after the forceps had been invented I imagine you'd have been at risk of it making things a lot worse.

They were using forceps in Victorian times. I know this because of novels.

Tunip - "Did the midwife somehow get her hand in there and yank?"

That is exactly what farmers do when sheep, pigs, cows, etc get into difficulties during birth. I imagine that the methods were pretty similar in human or animal back then.

They were invented in the 16th century but kept secret for 100 years.