Monday, January 08, 2007

cancer and wolf

And undergrads everywhere mourn.

* * *

Ganked from the secret blog of KS. Inform forthwith, Mme, should you be mad I am copying and reprinting yr very special list w/o permission:

So I have this old epidemiology textbook, right, from 1970...and on page 23 of this book is an excerpt from "Naturale and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index, and Made Upon the Billes of Mortality" by John Graunt in 1662. It is a list of "Diseases, and Causalities This Year Being 1632".

* afrighted
* aged
* apoplex and meagrom
* bit with a mad dog
* bloody flux, scowring, and flux
* brused; issues
* burst, and rupture
* cancer and wolf
* childbed
* chrisomes
* stone and strangury
* cut of the stone
* dead in the street, and starved
* dropsie and swelling
* prest to death (not to be confused with "cut of the stone")
* falling sickness
* flox and small pox
* french pox
* gowt
* grief
* jaundies
* jawfaln
* impostume
* (MY FAVORITE BY FAR) Kil'd by Several Accident
* King's Evil
* Lethargie
* Livergrown
* Lunatique (which is probably like a lunatic, only fancier)
* Made away themselves (suicide?)
* Murthered (which is being killed by someone with a speech impediment)
* Over-laid, and starved at nurse (your guess is as good as mine)
* palsie
* planet
* pleurisie and spleen
* purples (sounds like a fun way to go, whatever it is)
* Quinsie
* Rising of the Lights (a pretty way to go)
* Suddenley
* Surfet
* (SECOND FAVORITE, ALMOST TIED FOR FIRST:) Teeth
* Tympany
* Tissick



Anyways, TEETH.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"King's Evil" made me laugh. I really hope it means something like syphilis.

the Nabob said...

Berf. It's kinda gross.

Anonymous said...

Ack. That's less funny than I was imagining.