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?
14. Childbed: Referring to childbed fever- Puerperal fever is now rare in the West due to improved hygiene during delivery, and the few infections that do occur are usually treatable with antibiotics.
15. Chrisomes and infants- A new term to me. The term has come to refer to a child who died within a month after its baptism — so called for the chrisom cloth that was used as a shroud for it.
16. Cold and cough: self-explanatory
17. Colick, stone and strangury- Colic (obv. modern-day colic), stone- concretion of material, usually mineral salts, that forms in an organ or duct of the body (kidney stone?) and strangury (a condition caused by blockage or irritation at the base of the bladder, resulting in severe pain and a strong desire to urinate.)
18. Consumption: Tuberculosis
19. Convulsion- Epilepsy?
20. Cut of the stone- The removal of kidney or…