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Author
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Topic: death and destruction
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Dorothy Davies
Senior Member
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posted 11-18-2004 02:11 PM
 
Agricultural Records, an invaluable book, says for 1484 - 6, evidently fairly good harvests. Another unidentified disease in the autumn caused heavy mortality among human beings. (this is because the book is concerned with farming and livestock were more important, I guess).Anyone hazard any guesses as to what the disease might have been? |
Peter
Member
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posted 11-21-2004 10:15 AM
Dorothy,
I did have a little look but found nothing that jumped out. It seems such a short time span for something to hit the general population.
More like it has passed along the breadth of the country burning itself out as it went. Or, perhaps a very hard winter in the middle of the period. Good harvests or not that would still kill people off.
Peter |
Dorothy Davies
Senior Member
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posted 11-22-2004 05:04 AM
thanks for that, Peter. Yes, it is a short time span. In an earlier year they mention the sweating sickness which came in the Autumn. The first time I recorded that on my notes, it came out as swearing sickness, something most young people these days seem to be afflicted with! Re: Autumn, I commented in the chemist recently (buying supplies for a cold) that a lot of people were ill and she said 'it's the wrong time of year.' Autumn is certainly a time when we get ill, but a mortality disease like that does seem strange. I don't know who chronicled these Records. |
Peter
Member
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posted 11-24-2004 03:37 PM
Hm, yes!
If the common cold can kill now, what could it do 500-years ago. From a good summer to a sudden cold winter would produce symptons to those you hint at.
I think we all too often presume at illness in medieval times. Different types of virus come and go now. Why not then?
Peter |
Steve-O-Gerst
Senior Member
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posted 12-06-2005 12:40 AM
Yes, new fevers and colds develop all the time.I suppose they would have recognized the plague, so probably not that... But the plague would have been around for almost 100 years by then, and could have developed something new. Some people say that the plague was not just Bubonic plague, but also included wind borne anthrax. That would kill lots of people very quickly, and with little sign of what happened! |
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