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What's your most anticipated banger?
“Cancer, and Wolf.”
What?…. What?
Cancer, and Wolf, refers to the old common term for cancer: wolf. It was thought to be a parasite that ate up the afflicted, like a wolf.
“Have you been bitten by or interacted with any wolves recently, Mr. Jacobs?”
“No, I’ve never actually even seen a wolf in real life.”
“I see, then we seem to have misdiagnosed you, it turns out that you have lymphoma and you’re a liar. Now take this cocaine and get out of my office.”
Sounds weird from today's perspective, but actually refers to two notorious murderers that terrorized people at land and sea. You could protect yourself from either the cancer's claw or the wolf's tooth, but not both.
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Weird that cancer and wolf are grouped together
Apparently, "wolf" was a metaphorical name for cancers which "devoured" flesh, as opposed to creating tumors, I guess.
...but I mean that's the band name "Cancer, and Wolf"
Seriously though, going over a reddit threat this was on, looks like "Wolf" referred to a fast-growing tumor that "ate you like a wolf" or somesuch.
https://old.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/f3c2hi/cause_of_deaths_in_london_in_1632/hkh904m/
Cancer (and wolf)
"Be careful, my relative tried chemo for the first time and died 3 days later to a wolf attack."
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I would have died because teeth back then, for sure
It likely meant getting an abscess from an infected tooth which lead to sepsis. We're really lucky to have modern medicine.
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The fact that infants dying is the highest by far just shows how cruel nature is without modern medicine and birthing practices
in college, i did a fair amount of number crunching on mortality statistics and the demographic transition. here's some numbers i remember from the 1700s:
life expectancy: 40
life expectancy at age 20: 72
modern medicine has not added much to our longevity, we've just gotten rid of childhood mortality.
I read somewhere that it's actually an efficient method of nature ... babies that won't make it anyways die early so you waste fewer resources on them. it's called fail fast
Funny, when you apply that to biology, I think it changes its name to "eugenics".
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This is specifically a Dethklok track list. Some of these are kinda brutal.
Producer: Okay, but... "Teeth?"
Band: ::complaints and groans of disbelief::
Nathan: They're like... bone knives. In your face. And kids lose their first set with blood and agony, and then you get even more. It's so f---ing brutal. So we made a song about it.
Toki: Plus it's important to teach the kids about brushing.
Swissgar: Yous don't want to be losings your bone face knives.
Planet.
"Sir how did your wife pass?"
"Planet."
"pardon?"
"Mars got her."
"Mars?"
"yes, The Planet. slings bow over his back and gathers arrows Mars."
"Suddenly" interests me the most. Not a condition or even a means, just a manner.
Like a catch-all for things they didn't understand; heart attack, brain haemorrhage, things where someone's fine one minute, and dead the next.
Afaik, sudden cardiac arrest is a cause of death still used today. In spanish we call it just sudden death.
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my uncle died of "Sudden Adult Death Syndrome" per the coroner's report
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My votes go for:
- Prest to Death
- Fistula
- Livergrown
- Made Away With Themselves
- Murthered
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What the fuck is "Teeth" about?
It's the same as chrisomes. Infant mortality was so high, the ones who died without obvious cause just get lumped together by age group.
Chrisomes refers to those who died within the first month, during the time they'd be baptised. The baptismal cloth, the chrisome, would often be just as a burial shroud.
Teeth meant they were old enough to have one or more teeth, 6-24 months. Teething was thought to be potentially fatal because so many infants died during that period. Correlation, causation, yadda yadda yadda.
Seems more like band names to me... and according to the Encyclopedia Metallum, these are already used:
Stillborn, Aged, Apoplex, Bleeding, Flux, Sores, Burnt, Scalded, Burst, Rupture, Cancer, Wolf, Canker, Cold, Cough, Strangury, Consumption, Convulsion, Starved, Drowned, Executed, Falling Sickness, Fever, Fistula, Gangrene, Gout, Grief, King's Evil, Lethargie, Spleen, Sciatica, Teeth, Thrush, and Worms
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Someone needs to post detailed explanation of all those things. I hope it doesn't have to be me.
Found this: https://mediachomp.com/cause-of-deaths-in-london-in-1632/
My favorite: Thrush = yeast overgrowth / yeast infection of mouth (or genitals)
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My thoughts are with the single person who was killed by piles. What a pain in the ass way to die.
I like killed by several accidents.
Also teeth seems like a popular one.
"dead in the street, and starved"
Fistula.... I'm scared to search that....
Yeah, you're right to feel that way.
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I am going to die of Planet after I forget my parachute while sky diving.
How'd crackhappy die? Oh you know, PLANET.
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Considering it was London, I'm surprised death by teeth wasn't more prevalent.
It's 1632, dentistry was was carried out by the same person who did the medical surgery, who also happened to be the person who did the animal butchery too.
Also it's around the time that sugar started to come into the common person's diet from the plantations in the Caribbean and people didn't understand how terrible it was for their teeth. There's skulls of people who died in old age from the 14th century with basically perfect teeth but by the 16th they were rotting out of people's mouths by the time they got to their 30s.
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In 400 years our list of conditions will seem similarly naive and simplistic.
Been to a doctor lately? We can't cure shit. We've got a few meds that can help balance systems or mask pain. We can cut shit open and rearrange it. We can zap some shit with radiation. But actually fix anything? Nah. Maybe in another 400 years.
"Oh, look, they treated obesity as a disease. And heart disease? Hahaha that's funny. Hearts are so simple.Cant believe cancer is its own category. Everyone knows what causes that and how to treat it."
I will say the improvement in infant mortality is amazing. At no time in human history have infants had a better chance of survival than now(ish). So maybe I'm just cynical and disillusioned with the current state of my medical care.
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Apropos "Cut of the Stone". I read a book about history of surgery and one chapter was about a guy who remove his own bladder stone. Back then people didn't have great hygiene and urinary track infections were common. Those would cause bladder stone that would get worse and worse witch each infection. The stone would block the urethra entrance so you would feel you like really need to pee but once you stand up you wouldn't be able to. This wasn't very pleasant so people would try to remove the stones. Typical way was to go through the taint, open the bladder, remove the stone. There's a lot of blood vessels there so survival chances were not great. Doctors refused to do it because patients would die to often and then family would blame them and they had enough shit to deal with already. So you had traveling bladder stone removers. They would do the surgery and by the time patient would die they would be on the road again.
So this one guy, a blacksmith, tried to get his stone removed twice or had two stones removed already, it's not clear. Anyway, he didn't like the traveling stoncutters. So he got a sharp knife, asked some guy to assist him and did the surgery himself.
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Everyone is caught up on Cancer and Wolf and I'm over here like... Burst and Rupture?!?!!!!
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Death by musical instrument needed its own category.
Also killed by several accidents - a series of unfortunate events.
Also those darn evil kings!
And lights are dangerous when rising.
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this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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