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 second frida's recommendation of the Baroque Cycle

It's in Cambridge but I didn't write about the syphilis/mercury thing in it because how he died wasn't really relevant to the thesis - it was about his work rather than a biography.
I kept getting sidetracked by intimate details of his private life. His wife kept getting preggers and he wrote that she wanted to lock him out of the bedroom but he didn't think there was any point because 'the brats will come however you manage it.'
Since he ought to have understood the principles of human reproduction I can only assume he meant they had sex in other parts of the house.
(You always know you are in for something juicy when a letter begins, 'Darling boy, burn this letter as soon as you have read it....' )

Joan that's a very interesting point...

Well I was born more or less dead, so that's me off to a bad start
Then had whooping cough - dead for the second time
Am asthamatic - dead potentially for the third time
Had dystentry - possibly dead
Had hideous dental abscess (which I still miss because it was fun bursting it) - possibly dead.

Jesus I'm totally with you on the CJ Sansom books. They are immense.

FFS! did they not know yew was poisonous then? I didn't realise that, I thought that was ancient knowledge! Sad though.

Ariel - you are lovely and your posts are very interesting but please don't say "heavy metals" cos this is a non-scientific term that has no real chemical meaning (I know, I wrote a whole article on it because I had to look it up once). Even though lead does qualify on all counts, many of the other so-called "heavy metals" don't, such as arsenic (semi-metal) and aluminium (not heavy). I spent much time berating my students for using the term and wish it could be stricken from everyone's vocabulary.

Yes, the lead in the cans was from the lead solder, iirc.

Turnip that's brilliant!

As an aside, did you find that when you had submitted you felt completely bereft and miserable and hopeless??

(Funny sketch, mind )

Me too. I wouldn't have been born probably as my Mum had lots of miscarriages and I was stitched in. Other than that the asthma would have got me, or appendicitis.

Why is there no mention of appendicitis on the list? Would that be included in tympany?

Thumb can we still say it in ref to Black Sabbath and similar?

Erm ok, Thumbwitch. Sorry.

I had a teacher for Chemistry who used to carry little balls of mercury around in her lab coat pocket and play with them. She died of cancer later, I don't know if it was related but always assumed so.

I think I have never actually had an illness that would have killed me in pre-modern times, but quite likely infected cuts would have done it. You could die from a tiny cut just as easily as anything else, because people didn't know what to do.

ariel that is awful about the expedition - but in a way good to know what happened.

thumb - i have read somewhere that syphillis causes infertility/brain disorders/infant mortality many generations down from the initial sufferer.

Endo am ROARING at 'plaguey' (don't know why!)

Ironically enough this thread is keeping me from finishing up the history chapter of my own PhD.

Stop being so interesting ladies!

Lots of tonsillitis as a child, and pre-eclampsia. I wouldn't have made old bones.

Jesus it's true - the Ibsen play 'ghosts' is about that, if I remember correctly...

It would tear families apart because of course as soon as a child started displaying symptoms of the psychosis of hereditary syphilis, the mother would know that the father had been unfaithful, probabyl many times over...

Its remarkable that all our ancestors lived long enough to successfully reproduce.

Ah Dreaming, a little diversion is all part of the PhD joy

yes, re infected cuts, did anyone see Breaking The Mould a year or so ago, the documentary about the development of penicillin? One of the first person to be treated with it (can't remember if he lived or died - they could tell it was working but couldn't manufacture it fast enough ) was someone who had got infected after scratching himself on a rose bush

TSP - yes, that is still a perfectly valid use of the term "heavy metal"
I based my own article on [https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:LCUmDigkrbgJ:iupac.org/publications/pac/74/5/0793/pdf/+heavy+metals+definition&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj1zjLlCl49AdSo0Fbgtw0150_GWEmYm-QRbkIuArzZT9WMXQB0GG666aY-ly96DQ4lSR6TfjeK-SRtPRlxBMeG1FmvbJIa48vz8IDkTKA-hgLONuP3uj2aKdsEuffI2l6zr3nx&sig=AHIEtbTBzd-Yq9R5hkg9fgBsGLHnFBJIGg this one]] - not sure he mentions music though!

Jesus, didn't know that - I know that it can cause cleft palate/cleft lip in babies and apparently it was possibly a main cause for the people known as "village idiots" (not a term I like but it was what they were called).

bollocking hell

Thumbwitch - I would guess it was probably 'known' that yew was poisonous, especially by farmers who probably lost livestock to it, but maybe not 'general knowledge' to people in towns who hadn't experienced it. After all think of the number of 'Gosh, I didn't know that' threads we have on MN, even in these information -rich days.

Also, the Yew tree was thought of as a protector, because it used to be planted as a windbreak, and it was believed that the spirit of a house lived in it. Anyway, she was advised to do it in a dream, so it was obviously reliable....

I like the sound of Jericho's chemistry teacher. I aspire to that, but unfortunately we are not allowed to play with mercury any more.

I don't think I'd have died, but would have been a bit lame from breaking my leg at 18 months old, if that hadn't got infected. Or had to be chopped off.

Thanks Scarlett

As hard as it is to believe, my phd is actually more depressing than this thread, so I think I deserve a break!

Do you really feel bereft? I imagine when I'm done I'm going to wake up every morning singing 'no more phd wheeeeee!!!' Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't assume anything...

ScarlettPimpernel - I admit I didn't feel bereft after submitting! Just quite chuffed that I'd done it and slightly apprehensive about the viva, then after that I was just a bit scared at how long it was taking me to get a job.

What was yours about?

What was the main cause of cleft palate/lip??? I am actually about to research that for a different project...I need to know when corrective surgery first became commonplace (and successful). But. That's for another thread/ a trip to the library/Mr Google!

Thumb arf at such a scholarly article being written by a John 'Doofus'