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

Hey guys, I've been reading this thread for days, so forgive me if this has already been done here, but I'm sure I'd heard somewhere, that the Black Death is not now believed to be the Bubonic Plague, but actually some other horrible virus that left as suddenly as it arrived, and hasn't been seen since? I'm off to google it in a minute, but I'm trying to watch SYTYCD eat roast dinner and MN at the same time!

Haven't heard that one. I will investigate.

Too true Sarah - but he is very jolly and enthusiastic!

R2 if you are still fascinated by the Spitalfields coffin I can, in true geek fashion, send you the new paper about her if you PM me with your email address - but only if you have absolutely nothing better to read!

Thanks for the tip re: Daniel Defoe's book on kindle Mirage - shall be tracking that down! Very useful.

Slightly tangential to extracting still born babies - I was trying recently to find examples of women who died in childbirth or pre-term on archaeological sites and there are very very few - far fewer than I would have expected given it must have happened frequently. The consensus seems to be certainly since Christianity arrived that babies were removed and not buried with the mother because they hadn't been baptised. Seems awfully sad

The newest paper on the pathogen that cause the Black Death is:

Haensch, S., R. Bianucci, M. Signoli, M. Rajerison, M. Schultz, S. Kacki, M. Vermunt, D. A. Weston, D. Hurst, M. Achtman, E. Carniel, and B. Bramanti, 2010, Distinct clones of Yersinia pestis caused the Black Death, PLoS Pathogens, 6, e1001134.

PLoS one is an open source journal so you should be able to access it

Aah yes

I have spent a fortune on Amazon this afternoon

Actually no, I am wrong there was another of the full genome last year - the Wikipedia page is bang up to date here

Found this quote on stillborn babies from a book for midwives:

Item, if any childe bee dead borne, you your selfe shall see it buried in such secret place as neither Hogg nor Dogg, nor any other Beast may come unto it, and in such sort done, as it may not be found or perceived, as much as you may; and that you shall not suffer any such childe to be cast into the Jaques (privy) or any other inconvenient place. (Anon., The Book of Oaths (1649), 289)

Myth I'll PM you, yes please- thank you

must stop reading now and go finish my lecture for tomorrow...

Great thread though ladies!

I am just reading that page. Surely this can't be true! There appears to be a circle around Krakow which remained plague-free, even at the height of the outbreak. How odd.

Yes, there's another round Milan too!

sounds like witchcraft to me.
I suggest we chuck all the inhabitants in the river and see if they float.

hugglymuggly - the genetic predisposition that protects many Africans against malaria is not exactly that, it's a blood type. There is an antigen on the red blood cells (where the malarial parasite hangs out) called Duffy (short form Fy) and it facilitates the parasites entry into the blood cell. Consequently, considerably more Africans have no Duffy antigens (are Fya-b-), whereas most other populations have Fya and/or Fyb on their red cells.

HIV resistance doesn't work in the same way at all - but may be due to the immune system responding differently. It was thought that if the cytotoxic T cells get to the HIV virus first, and activate the cytotoxic immune system, HIV is usually cleared from the body. If the T cells that activate the humoral (antibody) system get to it first, then lots of not very effective antibodies are produced and the HIV virus gets to hang around. I don't know how far that theory has advanced, haven't checked it for a long while but that was in circulation at least 15 years ago as a working theory as to why some Ugandan prostitutes didn't get HIV despite repeated exposure.

Oh yes, before I went to bed last night I was looking at the purported causative organism of the plague, Yersinia pestis to see if it was sporulating. It isn't, and therefore I don't think it's the most likely candidate for keeping library books under wraps. Anthrax is more likely - but I don't know for sure, of course!

So she was a witch after all

I thought the protection against malaria was linked to sickle celled anaemia? So if you were het you have mild sickle cell anaemia but some resistance to malaria, but homo and you'd be likely to die from the anaemia or the malaria.

Or have I been lied to again?

We've been moved to 'Geeky Stuff' Brilliant!

Ariel I never know that about John Of Gaunt! Amaze.

This is going to while away a few hours in the office tomorrow....

Thumb you weren't actually looking at a vial of Yersinia Pestis were you??

Just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed reading this thread and how much I have learnt
Thank you.
I remember the Anne Boleyn curse quote from school, we had an obsessed teacher who forgot the rest of the syllabus in favour of the Tudors.. My result was dreadful, but inspired a life long love of that period

Sactter - het & homo? Assuming you're not talking about sexual preferences - what dat?

Definitely not that Sorry, I was in a genetics mode and not thinking!

Homo- and heterozygous, where you have two alleles ('flavours' of a chromosome) the same or different.

Someone mentioned the human mouth being heavily infested by bacteria. This picture proves it! Warning - it is gross, poor woman.

www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/local/hunt_stepped_up_for_bite_attacker_1_4173248

I do genealogy and have found some interesting deaths in the burial records.

Once I found a very Cluedo style one from the 18th, something like "Killed by Mr Soandso with a Rope". Plenty of kids dying from something called "Chin cough" (whooping cough?) Recently found one in the autumn of a man who'd fallen in the river in the early summer and only just been "washed up". Another of an elderly man whose gun discharged when he was cleaning it (The vicar keenly noted there'd been an inquest). Numerous infants dying of "Worms".

Endless inquests in the 19thC describing children who died when their clothes caught fire. This was unbelievably common.

Thank you, Scatter, for adding to my rapidly-growing store of extremely random bits of knowledge!