Tea at Trianon: Drinking Cold Water & Other 19th-Century Causes of Death

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, August 3, 2018

Drinking Cold Water & Other 19th-Century Causes of Death

From Shannon Selin:

In 1820, there were a total of 9,617 deaths reported in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston. (1) These were the four largest cities in the United States, with a combined population of 293,544. (2) Approximately half of those who died (4,762) were under 20 years old. Of these, fully half (2,436) were children under the age of one.
The largest single causes of death were:

Consumption (tuberculosis) – 1,619 deaths (17%)

Stillbirth – 561 (6%)

Cholera – 480 (5%)

Dysentery – 439 (5%)

Typhus fever – 368 (4%).

The remaining deaths were ascribed to a great variety of causes, hinting at rather discretionary methods of investigation and categorization: e.g., affection of the stomach & head (2 deaths), indigestion (1 death), hydrophobia (1 death), hysteria (1 death). Forty-six deaths were pinned on “teething.” Ninety-seven were simply classified as “sudden.” The 106 deaths attributed to “unknown” causes presumably had less inventive reporters. What really stands out, though, are the 16 deaths blamed on “drinking cold water.” (Read more.)