Ever since I was old enough to think thoughts deeper than “I want a candy bar,” I have had this very unscientific, wholly subjective feeling (notion, inkling) that most things, on the whole, are just getting better.
And nowhere is that more obvious than the area of medicine. As early as 1592, parish officials in London instituted a system for keeping track of deaths in the city, as the plague raged out of control, ostensibly to curb the spread of disease by tracking it. Since there was no “coroner” and no legal requirement in civil law to report deaths to any kind of central authority, church (Anglican) officials hired “searchers of the dead” whose job it was to locate corpses, examine them, and determine the cause of death – Monty Python fans will recall the “bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, yet more evidence, not that any was needed, that Monty Python was so damn good because they drew their material from an understanding of philosophy and a deep knowledge of history to make us laugh:
CART MASTER: Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER: Here’s one.
CART MASTER: Nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead!
CART MASTER: What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing. Here’s your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead!
CART MASTER: ‘Ere. He says he’s not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not!
CART MASTER: He isn’t?
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. He’s very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I’m getting better!
CUSTOMER: No, you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment.
CART MASTER: Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don’t want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER: Oh, don’t be such a baby.
CART MASTER: I can’t take him.
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER: Well, do us a favor.
CART MASTER: I can’t.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.
CART MASTER: No, I’ve got to go to the Robinsons’. They’ve lost nine today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when’s your next round?
CART MASTER: Thursday.
DEAD PERSON: I think I’ll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn’t there something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy.[whop]
CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much.
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
CART MASTER: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
These “searchers” (the real ones) were not trained in any kind of medicine or forensics, it may shock you to find, and were paid by the corpse. The causes of death reported by searchers were recorded by parish sextons and clerks on weekly bills of mortality — which were then published and sold like “newspapers” for a penny. Sounds silly, but is it any sillier than Governor Cuomo’s daily news conferences in New York during the COVID pandemic?
The answer to that is a qualified yes. Yes, because of the lack of scientific or medical knowledge in the 17th century.
The bill of mortality featured above comes from a week in September of 1665. In addition to the alarming number of plague deaths (7165), many people died by other means. Some of those means seem strange to us because of their odd names. For example, those poor 11 people who died from a ‘Rifing (Rising) of the Lights.’ Sylvain Cazalet, who has provided us with a useful online glossary of antiquated medical terms, suggests it refers to croup, or any malady associated with respiratory trouble. My favorite entry from Sylvain’s glossary just happens to be the first – abasia, the “hysterical inability to walk or stand.” I don’t know how hysterical it is, but I think that was a non-woke description in days gone by of a disabled person who cannot walk or stand, like myself. Hilarious!
Then there was the lazy lay about who died of ‘Lethargy,’ those three people who died from farting (listed as ‘Winde’) and the corresponding three people who died smelling the farts of those with Winde, presumably, and were ‘Frighted.’ One person died ‘Suddenly’ (oh dear!), but it was a particularly bad week for the church given it saw two deaths, one ‘Burnt in his Bed by a Candle at St. Giles Cripplegate’ and another ‘Killed by a fall from the Belfrey at Alhallows the Great.’
The one thing about laughing about the often quaint, folksy, unscientific jargon of previous ages is that you can be sure that future generations will have a good long laugh at ours. When I was hospitalized back in 2007, I had a procedure with the very sciencey-sounding name of cystoscopy. I have since had the procedure many times; it is used by doctors to diagnose issues with the urinary tract, from which I suffer greatly.
WARNING: I am about to describe a cystoscopy. Some readers, men in particular, may want to skip over this, in which case they can safely pick up at the heading ALL CLEAR below.
A cystoscopy is a diagnostic procedure doctors use to diagnose issues surrounding the bladder, such as infection, bleeding, and signs of cancer.
It involves the patient (me) laying on a table with my knees in the air and spread, supported by stirrups on which to place my feet, my naked man garden exposed and hanging off the edge of the table, granting the doctor unfettered and unobstructed access to my penis, into which s/he slides a lighted tube with a camera attached to look around.
The doctor, usually assisted by a nurse (at least I hope she was a nurse and not just Brenda from the cafeteria), slowly advances this contraption through the urethra and into the bladder, as s/he watches on a nearby computer screen.
ALL CLEAR
The name ‘cystoscopy’ sounds all sciencey, but the first time they told me they were going to do this I said, “ha ha, nice one, now cool your jets there Turbo and tell me what you’re really going to do.” And I wonder if in 360 years’ time some would-be writer with abasia will be writing a post saying, “can you believe how much progress we have made and how ignorant and unsophisticated they were back then, shoving tubes up penises?”
Think of the progress we are bound to make in the years to come. And remember, it wasn’t that long ago, 1936 actually, that we were performing lobotomies to treat depression and sleeplessness!