Lethal Teeth & Causes of Death in London; Milk Leg, Breakbone Fever and Eel Thing. The Death List for 1665

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 464

 Coming on the heels of the only post that I’ve made on teeth is this happy element, a brief mention of lethal teeth in London in 1665. The listing of the death and its introduction (if not the actual dead themselves) comes in the form of a publication called The London Bills of Mortality, which was begun (so it seems) in 1538.  As an instrument of society the Bills were more for legal ramifications than for compiling medical information.  The Bill was a necessary element for legal burial and the transfer of an estate, composed to make sure (or for extent possible at this time) that death had indeed occurred and that the legal course could be enacted to disassemble the accumulated physical life of the decedent.  The weekly reporting and compilations must’ve been wearying, and I imagine that this was not the most auspicious or desirable job to have, wringing in the newly dead.  Death’s accounting procedure grew more systematized as time wore on, getting a more formal approach as early as 1603.  And it was not in every English parish that the cause of death was recorded, and the recorders were hardly a army of medical experts—causes of death were sometimes accurate, sometimes not, sometimes whimsical and sometimes all or none of the above.

The list below attests to a somewhat poetical bent in the naming of lethal afflictions; of course most meant something immediate and understandle to the reader in 1665, though today many of the names seem quire airy and adventurous, hardly things to actual die of.  The list comes from the groundbreaking work of London haberdasher and man of semi-science, John Graunt, who in 1662 published Natural and Political Observations … on the Bills of Mortality (1662):  it was a tremendously important work and a foundation stone in statistical applications in health and epidemiology, as Graunt tried to organize and interpret the collected data. 

Again, my attraction to this all stems from yesterday’s post on the question of the existence of teeth in the Renaissance—“teeth” is listed as a cause of death in 39 of these cases, the 6^th leading cause of death among the 39 causes listed.  I guess death might’ve been caused by a systemic infection caused by a rotten tooth ; or  perhaps the tabulator observed a dead body, saw a mouthful of bad teeth and nothing else obviously wrong with the body, and thus dubbed the cause of death as the most heinous looking thing that could be found.

 

Abortive Aged Ague Apoplexy Asthma Bloody Flux Cancer Childbed Chrisoms [1] Colick Consumption Convulsion Dropsie Evil Fever French-Pox Gangrene Gout Griping in the Guts Headmouldshot [2]

3 52 12 1 2 1 4 4 2 2 78 112 26 1 76 2 1 1 14 2

Jaundies Imposthume [3] Mortification Plurisie Rash Rheumatism Rickets Rising of the Lights [4] Rupture Small-Pox Stilborn Stone Stoppage in the Stomach Suddenly Teeth Thrush Tissick [5] Twisting of the Guts Ulcers

1 2 7 2 1 1 1 1 1 54 9 2 2 1 39 1 5 6 1

A few of the obscure terms explained:

Ague:  deep fever
Body Flux: sepsis? 
Childbed:  a baby or mother who dies during childbirth
Crisoms:  refers to a white baptisimal robe worn by an infant, meaning that this was a very young baby born    before baptism occurred.
Dropsie:  lethal inflammation or edema
French-pox:  syphilis (called “French” because of a decimating outbreak of teh disease in the French army.  That, or the prescribed treatment, which was the ingestion of mercury. 
Headmouldshot: edema of the brain
Imposthume: Abcesses or cysts
Rising of the Lights:  inflammation of the lungs or general lung problesms
Thrush—an infection of the mouth (especially in babies).
Tissixk:  tuberculosis

According to the website Magic-Nation "other causes of death included affrighted, bladder in the throat, breakbone fever, canine madness, commotion, eel thing, frogg, gathering, grocer's itch, hectic fever, kink, milk leg, screws, stranguary, stuffing, rag picker's disease, St. Anthony's fire, tympany, worm fit, wolf, and being planet struck". Most of these I have little  insight on, and even though they caused someone’s death, they still have a lilting, lyrical quality about them.  I particularly like and am curious about “eel thing”, “milk leg”, and “Stuffing”

Comments

[jasper]

26 people appear to have died of 'evil'. I wonder what the symptoms were.

[Penny]

Just ran across this particular blog, looking up "milk leg". Milk leg was the term used for a woman developing a Deep Vein Thrombosis (blood clot) in the Femoral vein, just after birth. The coloration of the swollen leg tended to be pale, and it also tended to happen about when a woman's milk came in for breast feeding. Hence the name, "milk leg".