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A comment on Old disease names frequently found on death certificates.

Re:Old disease names frequently found on death certificates by Steve44 on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @12:04PM (#27119797)
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.

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

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Re:Old disease names frequently found on death certificates by darrenf on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @12:11PM (#27119900)
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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_of_the_lights

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Re:Old disease names frequently found on death certificates by dylan604 on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @01:37PM (#27120998)
After reading the wikipedia article, I still have no idea what this is. Lung cancer, pneumonia, some other lung disease, COVID-1619?
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Re:Old disease names frequently found on death certificates by flobosg on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @03:35PM (#27122483)
According to one of the references[1]:

> 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...

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Re:Old disease names frequently found on death certificates by Steve44 on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @05:45AM (#27128473)
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.

[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.

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Re:Old disease names frequently found on death certificates by not2b on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @05:14PM (#27123610)
"Teeth" might be some kind of infected abscess. In pre-antibiotic days you could easily die from that.
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