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

Ah that's right - I read in one of those links that plannets was later named apoplexy - Choux's link again:
"?Plannet? (or ?planet-struck? or ?apoplexy? in later bills) is sudden death believed to be caused by the influence of the planets (no, really). Usually ?planet-struck? people died from a ruptured aneurysm."

although I thought apoplexy was a stroke rather than an aneurysm specifically.

MrsPotter ????

Ariel is that something to do with water (ie on the brain/feet etc)?

Thumbwitch apparently the US and USSR managed to aerosolize the botulinium toxin, which gives you botulism (you quickly become paralysed and die). The only treatments are so intensive, a mass outbreak would overwhelm any public health system. It's the one a lot of people worry about because the toxin is found easily in nature so terrorists could theoretically develop it.

We are so used to not worrying about things like plagues anymore but it's actually quite an historical aberration (one I hope continues!)

MrsPotter, get lost. Love.

fractals in nature - bloody marvellous things!

Dropsy was bloating due to some blockage or other, I think - although it could have been due to anything, including ascites - it's a symptom rather than a disease.

Mrs Potter - wtf, do fuck off. This is a very interesting thread for people with an interest.

people can still have dropsy today, i dont know what causes it but i think its a retention of fluid that affects the legs really badly.

not really understanding your post mrs potter?

Oh, ouch, poor babies with the mercury.

Dropsy is retention of fluid. You get it these days with diabetes (there may be other causes though). Phillippa effectively drowned when the fluid got to her lungs.

oh goody, dreaming. How lovely of them

I'm skim reading atm,and will read it properly,including the links later.I love this sort of thing.Pepys had a kidney stone removed without anaesthetic and survived.He had a silver box made for the stone and celebrated the anniversary of the operation every year.

There was a very interesting book called 'Underground London' where the author visited the excavation of a plague pit under a London church.After all those centuries,the people excavating still had to take precautions,just in case....

We still talk of calves and lambs scouring-it kills them surprisingly quickly.

It's extraordinary what people did having no idea it was potentially fatal - like arsenic in Victorian wallpaper and whatnot.

I have read a very interesting theory that the congenital madness that plagued Roman emperors,and eventually brought down the empire, might have been at least partially because they stored their wine in lead caskets - and lead poisoning can cause psychosis. That's why the most wealthy (and pissed ) got the worst of it...

It is fascinating that the same words stayed in use for animals, isn't it?! I love language.

oh arsenic - they used to use different arsenic compounds to colour sweets...

That's interesting re. lead poisoning of emperors, TSP!

Fish still get dropsy. But in humans it's mostly called oedema now, I think.

I am going to be uber generous and assume that MrsPotter is on the wrong thread.

I've just ordered Faber's Reportage from Amazon. I am one of those disgusting MNers with a bookcase in the loo.

Ooooh, that's interesting about the Roman emperors.

The Byzantine emperors were quite bonkers as well. Hmm.

Great thread.

A few years ago, I had some time to kill in Cagliari and ended up in the museum where they had wax models of the body (like the plastination stuff) made in about 1805.

And then, looking around the models of ships in the Museum attached to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Bonaria, we found ourselves peering into a glassed off room with mummified bodies of plague victims who died in the 17th Century. Still clothed.

I have one of those too, Stratters - well not an actual case, more a window shelf - my current read is "Béchamp or Pasteur?", a fascinating book about how Pasteur mostly plagiarised all his great "finds" but because he was patronised by Napoleon III, he was the one who got all the recognition. VERY interesting stuff. But not stuff you can read all at once.

I found out on a thread here that LM Alcott was treated with mercury and it might have killed her. It does seem scary how many things were treated with metals - why?!

That was my first instinct, SS.

The book of Reportage is the BEST loo book OF ALL TIME. It has lots of medical stuff in it too - I think possibly including Pepys' account of his kidney stone removal, although as I ahve naturally read the diaries in abridged form I might have read it there...

There's some awful torture scenes though. And lost of rude historickal sex. You're going to LOVE it.

Jericho what were they treating her for?? I am reading her at the mo! A big up to free books on Kindle.

Oh and do you remember poor Paganini? He played so lightning fast, and such impossibly difficult pieces, that they said he must be possessed by the devil, and tried to exorcise him with mercury .

Aye I have duly added that to my list of 'Places I shall one day visit'

Coooo, mummified plague bodies. How deliciously grue Aye

Flippin' mercury - knocked out all the hatters because they used it to cure the beaver felt; fancy using it to treat any illnesses! and now they still allow it in dental amalgam because apparently that's ok. It probably is but I have my doubts. If it's that ok, why are they reluctant to drill out amalgam fillings while you're pregnant? (or maybe that was just my dentist).

I like the sound of the Book of Reportage

I remember spending many happy moments as a child perusing the list of mortalitys that was in the introduction of my parents copy of Pepyps Diary.
Also a very good (ficitonal) look at this era of history, including tha early days of the Royal College of Surgeons, Newton and Pepyps is The Baroque Cycle:
If its not baroque, don't fix it ahaha

was it a lead powder that was in the make-up to make skin very white? cE1? mercury was used for many years in the treatment of syphallis i believe.