Tea at Trianon: Ailments, Complaints, and Diseases in the 1700 and 1800s

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

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.)