Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Ailments, Complaints, and Diseases in the 1700 and 1800s

 From Geri Walton:

To help you understand the diseases people faced in the 1700 and 1800s, here is a list, in alphabetical order, of the more common diseases, ailments, and complaints.

AGUE was a type of malarial fever. It was usually characterized by regular intervals of chills, sweating, and fever, and depending on these intervals, sufferers were said to have quartan ague, quintan ague, quotidian ague, or tertian ague. AGUE was also known as chill fever, the shakes, Panama fever, or swamp fever.

BILIOUSNESS was a liver disease characterized by gastric pain and an undue amount of bile brought on by disorders of the liver or gallbladder.

BILIOUS FEVER was a term “loosely” applied to a patient that suffered from any fever, along with nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea and was thought to arise from disorders of the bile.

BOILS, also known as furuncle, are painful, bumpy, red-pus filled skin abscesses usually caused by bacteria, such as staphylococci. However, physicians of the 1700 and 1800s did not understand staphylococci were the cause of these eruptions. Egyptians used moldy bread to rid themselves of these bumps, and, during Medieval times, boils were feared because they were a sign of the Black Plague. Between 1840 and 1850 a severe furuncle epidemic, which may have been a mild case of the plague, occurred in Europe, America, and South Africa and resulted in some people dying.

CANCRUM OTIS was a destructive ulcer that could erode the cheek, lips, tongue, palate, or face and was often fatal. It was prevalent in children between the ages of two and five and was caused by poor hygiene and poor nutrition. It sometimes led to gangrene, often resulted in irreversible damage, and could be swift moving, wreaking havoc within a few days.

CATARRH was a disorder or inflammation of the mucous membranes in a body cavity or in the airways. There were several forms of this disease: bronchial catarrh was bronchitis, epidemic catarrh was influenza, suffocative catarrh was croup, urethral catarrh was gleet, and vaginal catarrh was leukorrhea. (Read more.)

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