How would you have died in 1769?

September 5, 2013 7:27 AM

Spin the wheel to see what manner of highly unpleasant death might have befallen you in the past. The "tool serves up causes of death in proportion to how many lives they claimed in the chosen year." Consumption? Childbed? Plague? Putrid fever? Test your fate; you may decide time travel doesn't sound like such a cool idea after all.
posted by Annie Savoy (75 comments total)

PURGING AND VOMITING FTW
posted by Kitteh at 7:29 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Chrisomes and infants?

I always knew those kids would get me in the end.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:34 AM on September 5, 2013

Mother rising of the lights

I don't know what that is so quick check: "Infection in the mother following birth of a child".

Childbirth was a killer until about 100 years ago. I remember after my daughter was born - by emergency caesarian - pushing the pram through the cemetery of one of the old churches in London and noticing the number of gravestones of 17, 18, 19 year old women and thinking "without that team of NHS surgeons my wife and daughter would be there too." That and smallpox. For some reason "pox" was commonly listed on gravestones, but rarely ever any other kind of death. Maybe as a warning to graverobbers?
posted by three blind mice at 7:35 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

9 times out of ten its going to be some form of disease but i'd like a few " kicked by horse" or " death by chair" in there.
posted by The Whelk at 7:35 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Decay"

What is that? Did people literally just decay in 1769?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:35 AM on September 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

TEETH AND WORMS
posted by maryr at 7:36 AM on September 5, 2013 [6 favorites]

Man, our modern diseases simply do not sound as cool as they did back in the day.
posted by backseatpilot at 7:36 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Who needs time travel? Without western medicine, I would have already died, probably about 20 times in my lifetime. I have had (probably not in exact chronological order):

Scarlet fever
Severe asthma (multiple hospitalizations)
Anaphylactic shock with coma
Compartment syndrome and
Gallstones

Science FTW!
posted by Sophie1 at 7:37 AM on September 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

Man, our modern diseases simply do not sound as cool as they did back in the day

I don't know, "carcinoma" has a weird poetry to it. And "heart attack" or "heart failure" sounds like a bad breakup.
posted by maryr at 7:38 AM on September 5, 2013

KING'S EVIL

whoa
posted by heyforfour at 7:38 AM on September 5, 2013 [5 favorites]

1801: You died of...
Debauchery

Could be worse. Could be a lot worse.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 7:39 AM on September 5, 2013 [39 favorites]

king's e·vil
noun historical
1. scrofula, formerly held to be curable by the royal touch.

(So TB, basically.)
posted by maryr at 7:39 AM on September 5, 2013

Oh, apparently aka scrofula.
posted by heyforfour at 7:39 AM on September 5, 2013

All other accidents and adverse effects

All of them?! It would look like my death in the 90s was pretty messy, possibly taking several days to work through all of the other accidents.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:39 AM on September 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

I think poisoning was very common and the main reason people overtly respected each other.
posted by Brian B. at 7:43 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Lunacy! That must have been what they called it before Darwin came along.
posted by ceribus peribus at 7:44 AM on September 5, 2013

In 1811 I died of SUDDEN DEATH.

Don't think we've cured that one yet.

(On the other hand, given resuscitation methods, maybe we have?)
posted by maryr at 7:45 AM on September 5, 2013

Who needs time travel? Without western medicine, I would have already died, probably about 20 times in my lifetime.

Yeah, without western medicine I definitely would have died at 26. Except no one would have known why because it was something kinda freaky.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:46 AM on September 5, 2013

I saw this earlier this morning, as a companion to Slate's article on why we're living longer (it's a combination of large-scale public health initiatives and technology), which reminded me that I would almost certainly have died shortly after birth had I been born not so much earlier (I was several weeks premature and not-entirely-well).
posted by uncleozzy at 7:49 AM on September 5, 2013

Lucky day for me. So far, I got old age and lightning strike!
posted by dame at 7:50 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't need the website to tell me I would have died painfully of acute appendicitis in an earlier era, instead of getting the emergency surgery that saved me in my early 1970s childhood.
posted by aught at 7:51 AM on September 5, 2013

Hives!
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:56 AM on September 5, 2013

Oh boy, croup in 1860! That's sort of chilling, given that I had the croup damn near constantly for the entire winter of 2nd grade. Hooray for modern medicine, I guess?
posted by palomar at 7:56 AM on September 5, 2013

1801

OLD AGE

AW YEAH

Ideally as an admiral of the white
posted by elizardbits at 7:58 AM on September 5, 2013 [5 favorites]

king's e·vil
noun historical
1. scrofula, formerly held to be curable by the royal touch.
(So TB, basically.)

King's evil is the choice of the wuss. If you're hard core, you go for Herod's Evil:

The ancient texts describe the symptoms Herod experienced in his final days: painful intestinal problems, convulsions in every limb, intense itching, breathlessness, and gangrene of the genitalia. Josephus wrote that Herod’s final illness―sometimes called “Herod’s Evil―was excruciating.
posted by COBRA! at 7:59 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

ABORTIVE AND STILLBORN

Which makes me question the whole premise. There was no "I" to die at that point. I was never born.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:01 AM on September 5, 2013

So granted, the old diseases are exciting, but one cool thing if you look at the more modern deaths is that in 1960 almost every death was heart disease and in 1990 very few were. Obviously, death by heart disease still happens and is still a major problem but nowhere near the level it was 50 years ago.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:01 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't think a person who travels back in time is as likely to die from these same diseases. For instance, I've been vaccinated against measles and smallpox. Also, I know about germs and I know NOT to submit to things like bloodletting.

This won't keep me safe, obvs. But I bet 10000 modern people sent back in time would have a significantly higher life expectancy (obviously controlling for the fact that they didn't already die before they were sent back).
posted by DU at 8:02 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

There was no "I" to die at that point. I was never born.

Does passage through a vagina create the self?
posted by DU at 8:03 AM on September 5, 2013

I think time travel deaths would be more in the "burned as a witch" area than in the communicable disease area.
posted by elizardbits at 8:04 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Consumption and cough" keeps coming up for me in several different years.



Maybe I should move out of this garret.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:06 AM on September 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

1801

You died of...
Frozen
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:07 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Died 1811 of the Marthambles as a complication of the Strong Fives. It didn't help that I'd already been weakened by chronic Moon Pall.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:07 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

You died of...
Frozen

Late 90s Madonna is pretty dangerous.
posted by The Whelk at 8:08 AM on September 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

1920
Influenza
Influenza
Influenza
Something that is not the flu
Influenza
etc.

I suspect 1918-1919 would be worse.
posted by Hactar at 8:09 AM on September 5, 2013

one cool thing if you look at the more modern deaths is that in 1960 almost every death was heart disease and in 1990 very few were.

On the other hand, when I tried 1990, my results were:

Cancer
Cancer
Cancer
Cancer
Car accident
Cancer
Cancer....

That got creepy, yo.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:10 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

1811: MORTIFICATION

It's true. I'd taken far too much brandy and water the evening before, and so, fogged and dogged above and below by headache and tormina, I attended to my toilet and dress with less than absolute concentration.

After stumbling out into the miserably hot noonday sun, a series of staggering evolutions brought me through Clerkenwell to the Gilead Club, where I thought to seek balm indeed for my woes in one of the club's towering coffee urns. But no sooner had I passed the threshold than I was greeted with a perfect tempest of laughter! Even the skulking attendants (we had been forced to compromise on service after our former treasurer, Mr. Pricksley, had made off for Calais besatcheled with the club's '10 dues) were heard to whisper behind their hands as they scurried about with gammon sets and newspapers and platters of beef.

It was my Nemesis, Major Hawley, who at last enlightened (indeed, enshadowed) me as to my condition:

"By God, sir!" he roared. "You have put your waistcoat on backwards!"

I looked down at my front and was greeted with the bland blank black back of my waistcoat. How appropriate that I should thus be in morning.

"Quite," I said faintly.

I tell you: I died then. I literally died.
posted by Iridic at 8:11 AM on September 5, 2013 [35 favorites]

Metafilter: Does passage through a vagina metatalk create the self?
posted by michswiss at 8:13 AM on September 5, 2013

1990:

Cancer
Heart disease
Cancer
Cancer
Heart disease
Heart disease
Cancer
Heart disease
Cancer
Cancer

Or, put another way, smoking.
posted by nickmark at 8:23 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think time travel deaths would be more in the "burned as a witch" area than in the communicable disease area.

Probably falls under the general category of Universe Correcting for Paradox, in which you are summarily disposed of before you have a chance to fuck things up.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:23 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Killed by lightning in 1769!
posted by Rock Steady at 8:27 AM on September 5, 2013

In 1647, I committed a crime so horrible I was executed for it. After some time, I escaped my punishment in Hell and was reborn. However, the stain on my soul extended through my next reincarnations. In 1769, it manifested in my teeth as worms. The fires of Hell reached out for me in 1801 and I died of a billious fever, an illness so great it got me again in 1811 as a flux when I was but an infant. My next incarnation was aware of my great sin, but there is no escaping a crime so horrible - punishment, like the cancer that took me in 1860, is inevitable.

Desperate to live a long life while avoiding the punishment I knew I deserved, I drove myself mad in 1890 looking for a way out but found only brain disease. In my next life, I lived pure, having built up a small cult around myself, but Fate found a way and took me in a non-automobile related accident. Ten years later it was pneumonia. As my small frame choked out its last, I heard the hum of machinery transferring my soul into a new body. The process was too much for my host, but despite the intracranial lesions of vascular origin, I managed to live another decade.

Could I really sustain myself for ten years at a time? I begged my cult-scientists to do better in selecting my next body. Though it beat the fires of Hell, I'd rather live life than suffer illness waiting my next death. I spent the 1930s in a sealed off chamber, my only method of interacting with the world a tangle of mechanical tentacles. That dream ended in 1940 when a two fisted hero crashed a car into my robot body. The heroes were on to me! The stress was too much and in 1950 my failsafe body died of a heart attack while trying reach a vial of Urbatonium that would have been SupraMoxie's undoing. I got my revenge in 1960 when my self destructing base took both Moxie and me to the grave.

Of course, as I had been doing this for three centuries, I got out. It only took a little deal with a certain horned personage you might be familiar with. I had at last cheated Death!

But not the heroes! in 1970, Sam Sweetfist, founder of the Action Gang, tried to punch me but missed, causing a water tank to topple off a nearby building and land on me. His partner Saint Charity quickly blessed it and the holy water was enough to cancel out my infernal favor. I crawled out of the Pit a few years later, but could not keep my wretched body together and it dissolved in a bloom of tumors in 1980 (although being exposed to Nuclear Dude didn't help).

It was like the Universe didn't want me! Like Mother Earth herself conspired against me! What was so wrong about what I did in 1647, I ask? All I did was strangle one small child! It was my right! I had never had sex with its mother, my wife, and though she claimed to be true to me, I knew it was a lie. Why else would those three men have arrived so promptly after that bastard was born? They were in on it, so along with my wife, they died too.

I tried to ask God that very question in 1990. His answer came in the form of 'All other accidents and adverse effects.'

So now I sit here in darkness, waiting for my chance. I know now I will never be forgiven, but in time, sweet plentiful time, I will be forgotten.

And then I shall rise again.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:30 AM on September 5, 2013 [14 favorites]

Killed by lightning in 1769!

That's what you get for listening to pervy old Ben Franklin.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:31 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Run through with an awl.

Someone should mash this up with the Gashlycrumb Tinies.
posted by acb at 8:31 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Hooping cough. (an overdose of hula hoop, I guess)
posted by surplus at 8:32 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

died on 3 August 1769, killed in a duel
posted by surplus at 8:40 AM on September 5, 2013

Mother rising of the lights. Sounds nice!

*GOOGLES*

Hmm. May be croup, or liver inflammation, or hysteria?! Hmm couple of reports of this as a lung thing (incl possibly pulmonary embolus), although post-partum sickness, incl. depression, is also mentioned. So in any case, not so nice!
posted by Mister_A at 8:41 AM on September 5, 2013

Consumption and cough. Well I'm asthmatic, so I guess that makes sense. I would definitely be dead without western medicine (asthma, childbirth, gallstones).

I just finished reading "The Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis, which is about a near-future historian time traveling back to 14th Century England. Great read, but fucking depressing stuff.
posted by Joh at 8:41 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I kept waiting for either dysentery or misadventure to show up.

Though, I suppose debauchery is close enough to misadventure.
posted by anthom at 8:43 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I swear that I died of wind, but I can't get it to happen again, so now I think I imagined it. I can't imagine what that would have been. Diarrhea, sure, but gas?
posted by epj at 8:47 AM on September 5, 2013

1759: "Nothing."

I-

Hmm.

Wh-?

Hmm. Hmmmm.
posted by Iridic at 9:10 AM on September 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

Cancer
Cancer
Fragged
Cancer
Car Accident
Terrible Mistake
Cancer
Wind
Ghosts
Cancer
Falling out of a plane
Falling off a cliff
Falling off the couch
Cancer
Reading too much news
Cancer
Ingestion of inedibles
Birds
Cancer
You live!
If only.
posted by Chutzler at 9:11 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Science marches on: by the time I got to the 18th Century, the typographical peril of "Hooping cough" had been surpassed by the actual peril of "Whooping cough."
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on September 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

My favorite history of medicine fact is from the wikipedia article on bloodletting:

Bloodletting persisted into the 20th century and was even recommended by Sir William Osler in the 1923 edition of his textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine.

The whole article is pretty good. George Washington's doctors pretty much straight out killed the guy.
posted by bukvich at 9:21 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

DU: "Does passage through a vagina create the self?"

Considering that (a) we're made up of way more bacteria than "own" cells and (b) we're usually picking up a good portion of our initial bacterial flora during vaginal delivery it would probably be fair to state that passage through a vagina at the very least creates a different self in some sense than a cesarean delivery.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:21 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also: Iliac Passion

Yikes

Dying of a blocked intestine sounds... uncomfortable. I like pooping.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:22 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I died of "aged" in 1647. That doesn't sound so bad, really.
posted by workerant at 9:25 AM on September 5, 2013

Died 1811 of the Marthambles as a complication of the Strong Fives. It didn't help that I'd already been weakened by chronic Moon Pall.

Marthambles: 1960s Folk Rock album
Strong Fives: 1920s Jazz combo.
Moon Pall: 1972 Nick Drake album.

The diseases of the past are named after pop music references deleted from the future. There's a time-travel short story in here somewhere. Pretty soon we'll all be reading about people dying of King Crimson in 1758 and succumbing to the Savoy Stomp in 1814.
posted by yoink at 9:30 AM on September 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

I died of "aged" in 1647. That doesn't sound so bad, really.

Except that "aged" in 1647 was about 36.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:33 AM on September 5, 2013

The diseases of the past are named after pop music references deleted from the future.

You're right. Putrid Fever = 1980s Italian hardcore punk band.
posted by Annie Savoy at 9:38 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Whenever anyone waxes romantic about the past, my favorite Auntie huffs and says, "I get down on my knees and thank God my mother didn't have me one damn minute sooner than she did."

I'm of a divided mind, as in most things. I've had a laundry list of things go wrong with this old lemon of a body over the years, from accidents to chance encounters with disease to congenital disorders, many of which have changed from automatic sentences of death or invalidism to chronic conditions in the last years, decades, and centuries. On good days, it feels great to have cheated an ancestor's certain death, and to laugh in the face of some ancient devil like cancer.

On bad days, it feels like a bit of a raw deal to be expected to tough out who knows how many decades of pain and weakness, and to have a second full-time job (not only unpaid but costly) in health care thrust upon you when an ancestor could have gracefully retired into her creepy postmortem tintype and hair bracelet. Awlus a muddle. Mom calls me Timex, my PT calls me The Black Knight, but I'm starting to suspect I may be the Highlander.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:43 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Pretty soon we'll all be reading about people dying of King Crimson in 1758

According to some interpretations,
Everyone who ever died was taken
by King Crimson.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:52 AM on September 5, 2013

The diseases of the past are named after pop music references deleted from the future. There's a time-travel short story in here somewhere. Pretty soon we'll all be reading about people dying of King Crimson in 1758 and succumbing to the Savoy Stomp in 1814.

Headmouldshot: 1980s British Metal band.
Horseshoehead: 1990s Grunge band.
Chrisom: 2000s gentle Christian balladeers.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:20 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Martha[and the Vanda]mbles
Calling all around the world
Are you ready for a new disease?
Winter's here and the time is right
For dying in the streets . . .

The Strong Fives
If you can't stand on your own two feet
Look alive
It's the strong fives
It's the strong fives

If you palms are sweating and you itch
With the hives
It's the strong fives
It's the strong fives

Pay all your bills, get your 'fairs in order
Write up your will, time is gettin' shorter
Take all your pills, 'tho its sorter
Pointless at this stage

Now you notice
It's getting dark, and it's getting colder
This is your mark, you won't get no older
You weren't no spring chicken
Anyway

Doctor Knox is glad to see you here
'Neath his knives
Invented strong fives
Just to take lives (for science!)

Burke and Hare his henchman earned a rest
They'll take five
That's no jive
It's the strong fives
They'll take five
That's no jive
It's the strong fives

Moon Pall
Call her moon pall
Stealing hemoglobin from your bloodstream
Deadly moon pall
Passed from hand to hand or so it seems

Bleeding sailors white in the void of moon
Rising like a wave of revulsion
Pouring out the wine for the crimson king
Setting like a stain on a shroud
posted by Herodios at 11:20 AM on September 5, 2013 [5 favorites]

1801: Diarrhea
1811: Diarrheas

Boy that escalated..
posted by one_bean at 11:35 AM on September 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

"Consumption and cough," and then "whooping cough," says the wheel as I sit here at my computer screen with a horrible cough that's been going on all day. Hmm....

1930: "Accidents excluding motor vehicle."
posted by Autumn at 12:45 PM on September 5, 2013

1990: All other accidents and adverse effects


"I heard something terrible happened to Debaser..."

"Yeah... He died in an accidents"

"Umm.. an accidents?"

"Yeah... It just... I mean, it was... just... all of them... Sweet mercy of God....it was ALL of them."

"I... I have never seen anything quite like it, and I honestly hope I never will. Industrial, vehicular, boating, household, workplace... I mean, there were giant tankers, cruise ships, passenger jets, small cars, big cars, trucks, forklifts, vats of acid and goggles which do nothing, house fires, animal attacks, trees falling, stairs, fitness equipment, cracks in sidewalks, scaffolding... even attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. My brain must have shut off after that, but the screams and metal and ohmygod.... All at once, all in one place, and all happening to the same person... Damndest thing there ever was, I tell ya. Strangest thing, though, it happened right after he stepped on Silky Jonhston's cape
posted by Debaser626 at 1:25 PM on September 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

PLAGUE
PLAGUE
PLAGUE
PLAGUE
PLAGUE
PLAGUE
PLAGUE


I eventually gave up. The Random Number Generator is trying to tell me something.
posted by jeather at 1:52 PM on September 5, 2013

You can die of HIVES? Really?

Damn, I guess I don't appreciate my Benadryl enough.
posted by MoxieProxy at 4:09 PM on September 5, 2013

Well at least I wasn't burned at the stake in the Spanish Inquisition!

So why do I die twice from consumption and once from tuberculosis?

Of course, with my consumption I was the ideal of feminine beauty at that time. Plain old TB is so ... jejune.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:34 PM on September 5, 2013

Plain old TB is so ... jejune.

Lord my gal's trying to make a fool out of me
Trying to make me believe I ain't got that old TB.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:15 PM on September 5, 2013

What a coincidence ... I was just reading yesterday about Italian composer Pergolesi dying from tuberculosis aged 26 in 1736. That's even more grim than Schubert at 31 a century later.
posted by Twang at 8:24 PM on September 5, 2013

While Tragically Rescuing Family From The Wreckage Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship
posted by ceribus peribus at 12:06 AM on September 6, 2013

I came, I saw, I died of THE diarrheas.
posted by stormpooper at 7:16 AM on September 6, 2013

Coughs and consumption until suddenly brain disease.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 11:37 AM on September 6, 2013