Mind your language
MY HUSBAND was out pretending to shoot something, leaving me in a snug library on the dry side of windows streaming with unremitting rain. I picked up a volume of The Gentleman's Magazine for 1745, and was immediate- ly hooked by the London General Bills of Mortality for the year.
It was the poetry of 18th-century popular diagnoses that fascinated me. What good fortune that my Nimrod of a husband was out on the soggy moors, or he'd have brought me down to earth quick enough with the modern polysyl- labic nomenclature.
Anyway, 14,078 people were chris- tened in London that year, but 21,296 buried (of whom 7,689 were under two). It was no surprise that Consump- tion killed 4,015, but I did not expect to find this outnumbered by the 5,728 dead of Convulsion; I wonder how many were infants.
The poetry comes with Leprosie (3) and Lethargy (5), Vapours (1) and Worms (13). Tympany (2) puzzled me till I looked it up; it is swelling of the belly, or more loosely any kind of lump, Which does not help. Imposthume killed 22 and the Itch 4; Bloody Flux 15; Cancer 46, but Canker 1; Colick, Gripes and Twisting of the Guts 135. Dropsy claimed 1,094, which only nar- rowly outdoes Teeth (1,048).
The painful Gravel, Stone and Stran- gury killed 36; 3 were Murder'd, 2 Stabb'd (a nice distinction) and 32 died by Self-murder. Rising of the Lights killed 4 and Livergrown (which means What it says) only 1. One was Frighted to Death, and 41 died of Excessive Drinking; simple Surfeit accounted for 5. Fever — Scarlet, Spotted or Purple — finished off 2,690 and 2 were Choak'd with Fat. That is strange; I can understand one choking on fat, but two sounds suspicious. Piles 1; Palsy 41; Quinsy 13 and St Anthony's Fire 1; Smallpox 120 and the French Pox 76; Grief 11; Starved 5; Evil (presumably the King's, or scrofula, rather than diabolic) 23; Ague 6; Morti- fication 209. The deaths of 75 were attributed to their being Lunatick; and 154 died of the unpleasantly named Headmouldshot or Horshoehead — malformation of the developing bones of babies' skulls.
I hope that in our own day the Stone and Teeth can usually be treated suc- cessfully. I suppose quite a few people die of Dropsy (or its causes) and Liver- grown. It is just that we have surren- dered our vivid medical vocabulary to the experts.
Dot Wordsworth
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