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

well, david b did do a sketch on the bills of mortality. I had no idea tbh that this meant nobody else could ever talk about it again

Oops, I can't remember now! Sorry, I'm useless. Scarlet fever? It was on a thread in Adult Fiction that kept popping into active convos a couple of days ago.

thumb - my dentist wouldn't let me have amalgam fillings when I said I intended to get pregnant, either. FWIW.

I've been on this thread, and following links from it, since 10 o'clock

The bodies may well have been alive for 'medical dissection' The sentence of hanging, drawing & quartering was carried out until the 19th century.

I think mercury DID actually cure syphilis, but only in very minute quantities. Easy to get it wrong

Yes, Elizabeth's lovely white, fair complexion was lead oxide based. I prefer Olay myself.

Mrs Potter, the Hello! and OK threads are over there, you've clearly got lost. Don't slam the door on your way out.

yes, Jesus, it was - daft, hey!
And women would put deadly nightshade juice (belladonna) into their eyes to relax the iris, giving them larger pupils, hence "belladonna" = beautiful lady. I wonder if that actually killed any of them...

And I am fairly certain that Scarlett never saw that David B sketch. Given that his career was buried by the late nineties and she is just a young nipper. Our interloper was just feeling spiteful I fear. Probably having a bad day.

It was really great and totally unexpected - we went to have a mosey round the art collection and then there were all these realistic wax innards made centuries ago. Blew my mind.

And the Sanctuary museum is fascinating in its own right - full of models of ships made by seamen who have lived through a storm or a shipwreck and made a model of their ship in thanks. And then these mummies, looking like they just got shut in the room and died where they lay. Bizarrely brilliant. Oh, and there was a wedding going on in the church attached that we could see from the window next to the plague room. All a bit surreal.

Definitely worth a visit.

I did my PhD on an 18th c traveller and scientist. He died in his early 50s. Someone else who was writing about him reckoned his symptoms looked like heavy metal poisoning and pinned it on his experiments with mercury and cadmium. Looking at some of his letters to close friends and spending ages deciphering the bits that had been scrubbed out by Victorian owners of the letters, and translating the rude bits he had written in ancient Greek, I identified another cause of mercury exposure, however - he picked up syphilis on his Grand Tour and had mercury treatment for it.

Ariel

Garlic I now have a headache from staring at DH's massive PC screen and painstakingly copying out Hideous Deaths. Maybe dear Mrs Potter is right and I should get a life

Scarlet Fever would be so deliciously apt Jericho, given (SPOILER ALERT) that's what saw off Beth....

Poor Beth

I'm going to have chips for lunch. Thanks MrsPotter.

(I didn't like to own up to it but I'm not entirely convinced I've ever seen a Baddiel sketch )

Turnip where can I get your thesis?!?!?! Which library is it in?

When you think about it, it's only really in the last 150 years that we've come to understand the toxic nature of so many things; and remember as well that even in the 1950s, people were watching atomic bomb explosions protected only by sunglasses against the glare; tobacco was only found to be carcinogenic in the 60s, wasn't it? Or possibly the 50s...

Amazing really.

Oh, metal toxicity is a recent discovery. There was lead in paint & arsenic in paper while I was a child - the lead paint thing was discovered when my youngest brother was a toddler, so the rest of us have sucked a bunch of lead! I've swallowed nearly all the mercury in my fillings, now, as they've disintegrated. And our grandparents used to give us the mercury from broken thermometers to play with.

I've just acquired the Faber book of Reportage too, after a friend recommended it on her blog. It's currently my bedside book.

John Aubrey, who was also from the 17th century reports a couple of unusual cures, with varying results:

"Sir Jonas Moore - sciatica; he cured it by boyling his buttock"

"Mrs. Cl-, of S-, in the county of S---, had a beloved daughter,
who had been a long time ill, and received no benefit from her
physicians. She dreamed that a friend of hers deceased, told her, that
if she gave her daughter a drench of yew pounded, that she would
recover; she gave her the drench, and it killed her. Whereupon she
grew almost distracted: her chamber maid to complement her, and
mitigate her grief, said surely that could not kill her, she would
adventure to take the same herself; she did so, and died also."

x-post, Thumb :)

I MUST close this browser ... !

... in a minute ....

Oh! Oh! Talking of heavy metal poisoning, is anyone into Polar Disasters? Apparently, many of the doomed Franklin expedition of the 1850s were killed because of lead poisoning from the food tins. They found them buried in the ice and did PMs on them

Turnip - interesting! Given that chronic syphilis is supposed to have some form of mental deterioration as one of its symptoms, I wonder if that is more from the bug or from the treatment? [ponders]
Mind you, congenital syphilis also produces mental abnormalities, so possibly the actual bug. Unless they were being treated with mercury while pregnant as well.
[ponders more]

Do you ever wonder what is the 21st century equivalent of all that, Thumb? I mean - my grandfather died at 53 of pancreatic cancer. He was a scientist and had done a lot of experiments with flourescent (and radioactive) paints...

So - yeah: there is bound to be something that we all do now, that we don't know about yet...

am loving this thread! not only am i learning summat, im also seeing how to spell! - for good historical fiction, i can recommend CJ Sansom, really good gruesome murders with fantastic historical research - set during Henry VIII - terrific!

Is what you are talking about Mrs Potter?

Because I still don't get why you are being snarky about this thread?

How many times would have been dead if you had lived before modern times?
Me, several times from chest infections, infected mosquito bites ,appendicitis, and pre eclampsia

just bought Reportage can't wait till it gets here

Another vote for the Hunterian museum. I went with a school group and we got to go around the back to the bit where the general public aren't generally allowed in, lots more bits in jars. Also went to the Old Operating Theatre on the same trip, that was really interesting as they re-enacted how they used to amputate limbs - speed being the key attribute needed by the surgeon.

Anyone been to Eyam? Very interesting from a plaguey point of view.