1600’s Causes of Death Too Crazy To Believe

Twitter is a goldmine of any kind of information you could possibly want. So when I ran across this chart, I knew I had to share it. Let’s unpack this list of death causes from over 400 years ago:

1. Abortive and stillborn: ok, that is self-explanatory.
2. Affrighted. In Olde English it means, sudden or great fear. So someone was frightened to death?
3. Aged: self-explanatory
4. Ague: malaria or some other illness involving fever and shivering.
5. Apoplex: is a rupture of an internal organ and the accompanying symptoms or known as a stroke.
6. Bit with a mad dog: 😳 yikes
7. Bleeding: self-explanatory
8. Bloody Flux: diarrhea in which blood is mixed with the intestinal discharge. So food poisoning?
9. Bruised, sores, ulcers: kind of self-explanatory
10. Burnt, scalded: cooking over fire, this happens
11. Burst and rupture: appendix?
12. Cancer and Wolf: Ummmm….obviously cancer is self-explanatory but wolf?
13. Canker: canker sore?