Patrick OBrien made up a disease "Marthambles" which other authors have sometimes used (probably, taking him as a reliable source because he mines the letters and journals of real napoleonic era naval people and associated families)
Love those books. Not often I encounter someone else who's read them. Which is maybe a little unusual as it's not like they're unknown or rare. I guess Napoleon-era naval warfare is maybe a bit of a niche nowadays.
the fan-list pretty much went 50/50 on it. mashing several books together made sense filmic-wise but ruined the chance of significant followups on the real plot inherent in the books. It was beautifully shot. Rusty is a bit of a dog, but was a reasonably well cast Aubrey. I'm less sure Paul Bettany caught the Maturin role, but we're down in the weeds.
Peter Weir: Picnic at hanging rock, Gallipoli. Dead Poets. Trueman show. Amazing backlist of films.
Not all so old. Many of those are diseases still very much with us and referred to by the same names. Tetanus and delerium tremens are still on some death certificates today. At least to me, lockjaw and the shakes are still colloquial terms for them, even. I wouldn't find it odd if someone used them. Though calling TB consumption would be a bit pretentious.
Here are some disease names that are still frequently found on death certificates such as malaria fever, yellow fever, dengue fever, bloody stools and many more
This is the 1800s we're talking about, a time when people routinely died from infections and sepsis. Organ failure over a couple days is a walk in the park by comparison.
Yeah they both look like crap from a comfy 21st century office chair in an air conditioned building but so does practically every other reality of 19th century life.
> Organ failure over a couple days is a walk in the park by comparison
The symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning are vomiting and severe diarrhea, severe stomach pain, convulsions and muscle cramps. Your hair falls out, you vomit and piss blood, then after a few days, you fall into a coma and die.
Note also that that could be a euphemism (or simply a cause of) suicide. As suicide was considered a sin (and also often considered scandalous by the surviving family) it was rarely mentioned on death certificates.
Sort of like the precipitous decline of alcohol-related deaths during prohibition: clearly prohibition must have prevented (or delayed!) some alcohol-related death, but out of respect for the family another cause of death was commonly used instead during that period.
Note also that that could be a euphemism (or simply a cause of) suicide. As suicide was considered a sin (and also often considered scandalous by the surviving family) it was rarely mentioned on death certificates.
Interestingly in modern times, at least in conservative areas, sometimes police/coroners will label an accidental self-hanging as suicide, as that's less embarrassing to the family than the reality.
Why not just list the cause of death as "accident", instead of "accidental self hanging" (embarrassing and needlessly specific), and also instead of "suicide" (since it wasnt their intent to kill themselves)
"accident" doesn't tell you anything about what caused their death. They could have been hit by a car, stepped on by an elephant, electrocuted in the bathtub etc. They'd be better off ignoring if it were intentional or accidental and just listing what killed them like asphyxiation, heart failure, etc although that can have problems too since life insurance may or may not pay out without knowing if it was suicide
Depending where you are, misadventure isn't really a euphemism. In England:
Suicide means the deceased did something to end their life, and had the intention of ending their life when they did it.
Misadventure means the deceased did a risky thing and died, but did not have the intention of dying when they did it.
Accident means the deceased was doing a normal activity and died.
Definitions of the manner of death can be nice and clear on paper, but are much harder to apply to the situations of a person's death, so there's lots of overlap between suicide and misadventure. It's often difficult to show intent, and so those deaths sometimes get called misadventure, or they have a narrative conclusion.
That is extremely fucked up. If a family member accidently killed themselves trying to jerk it there'd at least be some sort of closure, if they supposedly killed themselves people would be running around in circles trying to figure out how they'd missed the signs, what impact they could have had on the person, etc.
> Interestingly in modern times, at least in conservative areas, sometimes police/coroners will label an accidental self-hanging as suicide, as that's less embarrassing to the family than the reality.
I've actually read an interview with a parent who lost a child that way who said it gave them comfort knowing that their child's death was simply an accident, rather than a mental illness problem that they could have missed.
Wish I could remember how to google it and get an actual cite. IIRC it was in the New Yorker or something.
Until I read the part about "insecticide" I thought that might have referred to drinking too much of the Green Fairy. After all, absinthe was banned there.
It was also used as a pigment. They made it for paint.
I believe when I learned about Paris Green, in some documentary, it was mentioned that it was also briefly used for consumer goods. My association of Paris Green is a picture of a rich green notebook cover and the narrator saying that scholars have to wear gloves to read its contents. Name of the Rose vibe going on there, but the theory is that it was used to keep rodents from chewing on the books.
Also if you're collecting old books, be careful of the green ones. It seems they started with Paris Green in the 1600's but continued using arsenic for green colors all the way into the 20th century: https://daily.jstor.org/some-books-can-kill/
I have some recollection of a paint that used uranium, but the current front runner for me is Naples Yellow, which is three lead, one antimony, and four oxygen atoms. Definitely don’t lick that brush.
My aunt and uncle both died of this, together with around 5 or 6 more people in the early 90s when one of their neighbors, an old lady, baked a cake for a birthday and mistakenly used Paris Green. She managed to poison all these people and, none survived, while she didn’t manage to have any of the cake and lived. Wanted to see if I can find anything online about this, but there’s not much saved from newspapers in Bucharest, Romania from that time.
A lot of these are still used, although some in slightly different contexts. A few of them could still be seen on death certificates. I have to wonder how the author decided on the list. Just looking at the first few letters:
We still describe widespread oedema as anasarca.
Apoplexy is still used, but only really in the context of pituitary apoplexy.
Atrophy is of course still in use.
Cerebritis is still used.
Cholera, obviously.
Chorea is still a description of abnormal movements (Huntington's Chorea, Sydenham's Chorea etc.)
Colic still used to describe a certain kind of abdominal pain.
Congestion is still a term.
Coryza is still used to describe the collection of symptoms you get from an URTI.
Cyanosis is still the correct term.
Cystitis is still the term for bladder inflammation.
> I have to wonder how the author decided on the list.
The same list is found here [0], and I assume it started at the university and then was borrowed by the genealogy site. I assume it's things the OSU history department has found in Civil War letters.
This list certainly makes more sense as an explanation for the layman than a list of outdated disease names. Feels like about third are still in common use.
"excited delerium" is not a medical term and has only been invented fairly recently by law enforcement authorities so don't expect it to appear on historical medical documents.
On a related note there are documents called "Bills of Mortality" showing weekly deaths during the plague in London during 1665 ( the year before the Great Fire ) which list the causes. There some descriptions we'd recognise and other would be a surprise to die from these days, such as "Teeth" - 113 in the week of the linked image.
Having had a quick search the best seems to be from the Wellcome Collection.
I find Bills of Mortality fascinating, and am somewhat disappointed that my favourite inscrutable-sounding cause "Rising of the Lights"[0] didn't make it into the list posted.
The 1926 BMJ letters page [1] has correspondence discussing what they thought it was. Nothing specifically medical, but something coming up into the throat and quite possibly croup[2]. For a butcher Lights are generally animal lungs, but the 'cure' was taking a small amount of lead shot or mercury to stop the lights rising.
> Cholera - Acute severe contagious diarrhea with intestinal lining sloughing
Also:
> French pox - Syphilis
Fun fact about Syphilis, each nation called it after the nation they thought they got it from. The French call it the Italian disease, Italians call it French, Turks call it Christian, Russians call it Polish, Dutch call it Spanish, ...
I’ve travelled enough to hear urban legends slightly distorted
Basically anywhere you go in the world there is a group of people that “has genes that dont metabolise alcohol” and this is presented as scientific fact with no study existing whatsoever, and masquaraded as the tolerant way of acknowledging problems integrating with that group of people
“But I heard from” doesnt matter who you heard it from, show the study and show why it is a good study, or drop the idea completely (or fund the study)
It can be the US, the UK, Central Europe, Asia, people repeat the same thing about another group of people in that area. Maybe its true in one of those places about one of those people. Or not.
Ask anyone who possess two copies of the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase-deficient allele.[1] Or if you want objective data, look at incidence of esophageal cancer relative to alcohol consumption.
It's just not as universal in various communities as sometimes assumed. And rather than make one more prone to alcoholism (i.e. as might be believed wrt Native Americans), the current scientific conjecture is that it makes one less susceptible because of the discomfort. Though, needless to say, indulging in such conjectures doesn't have a great track record, with or without the imprimatur of science. There are few if any facts that can't be twisted to serve some cultural prejudice.
[1] 23andMe.com test for these polymorphisms. I presume similar genetic tests do, too, as the function is so well established.
Yes great overview and that allele frequency graph is the best! I didnt know how to articulate it and assumed someone would just deflect toward east asian.
"Eel thing" for erisypelas sounded odd to me as the name for a skin condition. The only references I could find online are to copies of this list, so perhaps it was a transcription error.
The PS Slocum, built in 1891, was a paddle boat or sidewheel passenger ship. On June 15, 1904, the ship carried 1,358 passengers, plus crew.
Chartered by the St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church for $350.00, the passengers came mostly from the German-American community of the Lower East Side.
Most of the passengers were women and children. As the ship made its way up the East River, good times turned bad very quickly. There have been varying accounts of how the fire started, but it spread rapidly within a half hour of leaving dock around 9 a.m. The panic was horrific among the passengers as they faced death by drowning or being burned alive on the ship.
... Only 321 passengers survived from a total of 1,358 passengers. The final death count totaled 1,021. The next largest death toll in the United States would come decades later with 2,974 dead from 9/11.
80 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadPeter Weir: Picnic at hanging rock, Gallipoli. Dead Poets. Trueman show. Amazing backlist of films.
To put it into a little perspective: the Brooklyn bridge was built while this was still in general accepted use.
One or two odd ones in that list though. Especially considering they've supposedly appeared as causes on a death certificate.
For example: Scrivener's palsy - Writer's cramp
The mind boggles!
In the UK at least this would now be
German measles - Rubella
(edited for line breaks)
There is tonic/patent medicine called "gripe water" still used widely in the Commonwealth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gripe_water
"What's Paris Green?" I asked an older family member.
"Insecticide" was was the reply. It's also a pigment once used in fireworks. Extremely toxic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_green
What a terrible way to die.
This is the 1800s we're talking about, a time when people routinely died from infections and sepsis. Organ failure over a couple days is a walk in the park by comparison.
Yeah they both look like crap from a comfy 21st century office chair in an air conditioned building but so does practically every other reality of 19th century life.
The symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning are vomiting and severe diarrhea, severe stomach pain, convulsions and muscle cramps. Your hair falls out, you vomit and piss blood, then after a few days, you fall into a coma and die.
Doesn't sound markedly better than sepsis.
Sort of like the precipitous decline of alcohol-related deaths during prohibition: clearly prohibition must have prevented (or delayed!) some alcohol-related death, but out of respect for the family another cause of death was commonly used instead during that period.
Interestingly in modern times, at least in conservative areas, sometimes police/coroners will label an accidental self-hanging as suicide, as that's less embarrassing to the family than the reality.
Suicide means the deceased did something to end their life, and had the intention of ending their life when they did it.
Misadventure means the deceased did a risky thing and died, but did not have the intention of dying when they did it.
Accident means the deceased was doing a normal activity and died.
Definitions of the manner of death can be nice and clear on paper, but are much harder to apply to the situations of a person's death, so there's lots of overlap between suicide and misadventure. It's often difficult to show intent, and so those deaths sometimes get called misadventure, or they have a narrative conclusion.
A friend of mine took his own life. The obituary said sudden accident. It's what his family will say in most situations. But they know.
It would be very twisted to keep relatives in the dark, though I'm sure someone has done so and thought it a kindness.
I've actually read an interview with a parent who lost a child that way who said it gave them comfort knowing that their child's death was simply an accident, rather than a mental illness problem that they could have missed.
Wish I could remember how to google it and get an actual cite. IIRC it was in the New Yorker or something.
I believe when I learned about Paris Green, in some documentary, it was mentioned that it was also briefly used for consumer goods. My association of Paris Green is a picture of a rich green notebook cover and the narrator saying that scholars have to wear gloves to read its contents. Name of the Rose vibe going on there, but the theory is that it was used to keep rodents from chewing on the books.
Also if you're collecting old books, be careful of the green ones. It seems they started with Paris Green in the 1600's but continued using arsenic for green colors all the way into the 20th century: https://daily.jstor.org/some-books-can-kill/
We still describe widespread oedema as anasarca. Apoplexy is still used, but only really in the context of pituitary apoplexy. Atrophy is of course still in use. Cerebritis is still used. Cholera, obviously. Chorea is still a description of abnormal movements (Huntington's Chorea, Sydenham's Chorea etc.) Colic still used to describe a certain kind of abdominal pain. Congestion is still a term. Coryza is still used to describe the collection of symptoms you get from an URTI. Cyanosis is still the correct term. Cystitis is still the term for bladder inflammation.
Goes on and on...
The same list is found here [0], and I assume it started at the university and then was borrowed by the genealogy site. I assume it's things the OSU history department has found in Civil War letters.
[0] https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/cwsurgeon/cwsurgeon/med...
Diseases of Yore by MC Frontalot
Having had a quick search the best seems to be from the Wellcome Collection.
https://wellcomecollection.org/images?query=Bills+of+Mortali...
and specifically the "Diseases and casualties 15-22 Aug. 1665 from London's dreadful visitation" page
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/r4cx4qgx/items
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_of_the_lights
> Many doctors believed that only vulgar people used the term to describe a tightening sensation in the chest, difficulty breathing and a cough.
[1]: https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/wellbeing/polio-soon-off...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2523749/pdf/brm...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croup which is now tackled with vaccines and modern medicine.
> Cholera - Acute severe contagious diarrhea with intestinal lining sloughing
Also:
> French pox - Syphilis
Fun fact about Syphilis, each nation called it after the nation they thought they got it from. The French call it the Italian disease, Italians call it French, Turks call it Christian, Russians call it Polish, Dutch call it Spanish, ...
There are several others. "Dengue" is something we're currently developing vaccines for, not some Olde Tyme Plague.
Basically anywhere you go in the world there is a group of people that “has genes that dont metabolise alcohol” and this is presented as scientific fact with no study existing whatsoever, and masquaraded as the tolerant way of acknowledging problems integrating with that group of people
“But I heard from” doesnt matter who you heard it from, show the study and show why it is a good study, or drop the idea completely (or fund the study)
It can be the US, the UK, Central Europe, Asia, people repeat the same thing about another group of people in that area. Maybe its true in one of those places about one of those people. Or not.
Ask anyone who possess two copies of the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase-deficient allele.[1] Or if you want objective data, look at incidence of esophageal cancer relative to alcohol consumption.
It's just not as universal in various communities as sometimes assumed. And rather than make one more prone to alcoholism (i.e. as might be believed wrt Native Americans), the current scientific conjecture is that it makes one less susceptible because of the discomfort. Though, needless to say, indulging in such conjectures doesn't have a great track record, with or without the imprimatur of science. There are few if any facts that can't be twisted to serve some cultural prejudice.
[1] 23andMe.com test for these polymorphisms. I presume similar genetic tests do, too, as the function is so well established.
I've entered hundreds of NYC deaths from that period but never ran into that one before.
People die of Sciatica!?!? :-|