London’s official morgue death toll for a week of January 1665:
Abortive: 6
Aged: 52
Cancer: 2
Childbed: 40
Chrisomes (unbaptized): 19
Dropsie: 34
Flux: 1
Feaver: 383
Flox and Smallpox: 5
Gowt: 1
Griping in the Guts: 65
Jaundies: 4
Impostume (abscess): 13
Kingevil: 3
Meagrome (migraines): 1
Plannet: 3
Purples: 3
Quinsie: 2
Rising of the Lights: 18
Scowring: 3
Scurvy: 3
Stopping of the Stomach: 7
Suddenly: 2
Tissick (tickling faint cough): 3
Tympany (intestinal bloating): 1
Winde: 4
Wormes: 23
I don’t even know what half those things are. I’d be curious how (unbaptized) is a cause of death, though. Those zany 17th century Brits …
Ooh! I know a few of these.
“Purples” could a desease with symtoms similar to Swine Fever in pig, but it was also a nickname for when they brought in a guy that had died and was left face-down for a time. This would leave them with “bruises” on the face and chest where the blood had settled, hence, purples. Quinsie is tonsillitis. Griping of the Guts was ulcers. Kingevil was Struma, supposedly curable by the touch of royalty. An impostume is a pus-filled cavity, known today as an abscess.
Some more explanations:
“Childbed” is childbed fever, which is caused when 17th-century quack doctors went straight to the delivery room from having dissected corpses and delivered babies, giving the mothers fatal infections (it somehow took them a very long time to grasp the idea that touching bleeding, torn vaginas with hands encrusted with cadaver blood and flesh can transmit diseases).
“Chrisomes” is very early infant mortality where the baby dies before being christened.
“Flux” is bacillary dystentery.
“Plannet” (or “planet-struck” or “apoplexy” in later bills) is sudden death believed to be caused by the influence of the planets (no, really). Usually “planet-struck” people died from a ruptured aneurysm.
“Scowring” is also dysentery, I’m not sure how it differs from “flux”.
“Rising of the Lights” is severe respiratory ailments such as laryngitis, pulmonary embolus, and pneumonia.
Even stranger than yours is another bill of mortality from August of the same year:
Abortive: 4
Aged: 45
Bleeding: 1
Broken legge: 1
Broke her Scull by a fall in the Street at St. Mary Wool Church: 1
Childbed (post-partum infection): 28
Chrisomes (early infant mortality): 9
Comsumption (tuberculosis): 126
Convulsion: 89
Cough: 1
Dropsie: 53
Feaver: 348
Flox and Small-Pox: 11
Flux: 1
Frighted (I’m guessing fright-induced heart attack or something like that): 2
Gowt: 1
Grief: 3
Griping in the Guts (ulcers): 79
Head-mould-shot (when a baby’s skull bones are pushed over each other during birth, crushing the infant’s brain): 1
Jaundies: 7
Imposthume: 8
Infants (considering how many infant deaths appear under other labels, I’m guessing this is a catch-all diagnosis sort of like SIDS): 22
Kingsevil (scrofula/struma/goiter): 4
Lethargy: 1
Livergrown (disease-induced hypertrophy of the liver): 1
Meagrome (migraine): 1
Palsie: 1
Plague: 4237 (!)
Purples: 2
Quinsie (tonsilitis): 5
Rickets: 23
Rising of the Lights (severe respiratory disease): 23
Rupture (of what? I’m not sure): 1
Scurvy: 3
Shingles: 1
Spotted Feaver: 166
Stillborn: 4
Stone (kidney stones): 2
Stopping of the Stomach (I could not find a definition for this): 17
Strangury (extremely difficult and painful urination): 3
Suddenly: 2
Surfeit (choking on vomit from overindulging in food or drink, like the drummers from Spinal Tap): 74
Teeth (teething infants putting inappropriate things in their mouths and dying from asphyxiation, poisoning, intestinal obstruction, etc.): 111
Tissick (tickling cough associated with tuberculosis): 9
Thrush: 6
Ulcer: 1
Vomiting: 10
Winde (Catastrophic buildup of intestinal gas? Choking on farts? I don’t know): 4
Wormes: 20
Christned:
Males–90
Females–81
In all–171
Buried:
Males–2777
Females–2791
In all–5568
(yes, 76% of all of the casualties came from plague)
Increased in the Burials this Week: 249
Parishes clear of the Plague: 27
Parishes Infected: 103