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

My favourite place as a child was a museum that had a mummy with his bones sticking out. That fascinated me, and I used to have to be bodily removed from his presence.

Don't tell me, he then died of hideous diarrhoea after ingesting raw sewage, dead chickens, dogs, run off from tanneries etc etc etc.

Did you know there were three types of plague? Bubonic which was the one which hit London in 1665 and the whole of Europe in 1347 (I think?). Also there were some interesting variations: sceptacaemic, which infected your blood and which could cause a healthy looking person to drop down dead in the street, and pneumonic, which infected the lungs. Symptoms including foul breath, and the spluttering up of pinkish coloured blood. Ew.

On the one link I was reading, thrush is categorised with cancer and canker??

Oh Lor' SS you should deffo visit the Hunterian - they have the skeleton of the Giant O'Brian (also subject of a superb novel by Hilary Mantel, may she live forever!). And the skull of Charles Babbage. And an awful lot of pickled foetuses. Foeti. Whatever.

God, that 'teeth' thing is awfully, awfully sad.

scarlett - isn't it?! Obviously I was bursting to share that bit of info with anyone!

I am deeply envious of your project.

I don't think it's that surprising there weren't many deaths attributed to cancer back then -- what was the average lifespan, 30 years or something? Most people died of something else long before the age where cancer usually occurs.

Also it was pre-cigarettes, which takes away the biggest tranche of cancer deaths today.

And lots of cancers couldn't possibly be diagnosed back then, brain cancer was probably attributed to fits for ex.

I do think it's quite impressive they knew about cancer at all though!

Ariel I know about bubonic and pneumonic but not the other!

I remember when I was little my Dad telling me that someone, somewhere, has bubonic plague in a little test tube in a fridge somewhere. True, I'm sure, but it didn't 'arf put the wind up me as a 7 year old

Wouldn't strangury be urinary retention? Which is bloody dangerous? Rather than just painful peeing

Did any of you sickos morbid types (like me) go to the Bodyworks exhibition? That was truly fascinating! WARNING - DO NOT CLICK ON LINK UNLESS YOU ARE A MORBID TYPE!!

Jericho I am really enjoying it I must say

I get very very mizz if I'm not occupied in STUFF... Why should children have all the fun, eh?!

Plague is endemic in ground squirrels in part of the USA. Just saying, like.

There is still plague in some parts of the world. All you Londoners, watch out for plague pits.

X posts with Sarah.

But average lifespan is a bit unhelpful, because once you got past the dangerous bit of childhood, if you were a man, your life expectancy was longer than 30. You still do get quite a lot of 50 or 60 year olds on the books (disclaimer - well you do in 1500 or so, and I suspect it's not that dissimilar in 1665? Could be very wrong though.)

Argh Thumb I missed that but was very keen to see it.

Here's a pic of inside the Hunterian for anyone debating whether to go...

When we went, two utterly adorable girls of about 5 and 6 were talking to a skellington, and dressing in special jackets with patchwork reproductions of the vital organs stitched on the front, while their Dad was saying things like "And this is the LIVER and this is the LUNGS"

DH resolved then and there that our children, should they ever make an appearance, will be introduced to skellingtons ASAP.

Wasnt it in the news in the last 10 years or so that a person had caught the plague in New York?

I think average lifespan in urban areas actually fell once the Industrial Revolution started. I read that in Merthyr Tydfil it was actually 17 at one point . They kept falling into vats of molten iron and stuff.

Also, post mortems weren't legal back then - you couldn't desecrate a dead body to find out what had happened to it.

Cancer was variable - breast cancer could be spotted have a read of this if you've the stomach for it and note the Rembrandt painting that shows the misshapen breast, showing probably cancerous signs

Thumb - they used to dissect criminals though, right? There is a Rembrandt of a dissection of a hanged thief. I think the dissection was all part of the punishment. I mean jeez as if taking your life wasn't enough...

Oh, ariel that is horrible (the molten iron), but not surprising really.

Thumb have you got the Faber Book of Reportage??

It's kind of my desert island read, I think, and there is an account of a mastectomy done without anaesthetic that is the single most disturbing thing I have ever read. Written by, I should add, the poor patient

I am definitely going to the Huntarian. Perhaps a Sporners Meet could be arranged for there. It seems fitting somehow.

Yep in thenold bailey thing one of the ways of being put to death was to be medically dissected! Not sure if they hangedyou first, and it means your body was donated to science.

I am a Sporn lurker (If you're referring to what I think you are).

Did you watch that video of a man having a back cyst drained? When she went in with her thumb and then a pair of scissors I think I might actually have blacked out for a bit ....

Dear God Scout let us hope it was after death!!! I think it must have been. There'd be a lot of wriggling otherwise, not conducive to accurate dissection.

TSP - I saw it in London in 2003, I see it was in London in 2008 as well, so maybe it'll be back in 2013? Doesn't appear to be scheduled for 2012, only Canada, Germany and USA from the website. DO go, it's absolutely fascinating! especially the whole rabbit, just in blood vessels. Well, among other things - I just remember that one and the hand the most.