Ways to Die: Nutritional Disorders

Among the things to be grateful for this holiday season, you’re most likely not dying from any of these conditions…

biomedicalephemera:

I’ll be elaborating on all of these conditions soon, but here’s the 30,000 ft overview of some significant nutritional disorders (aside from allergies and deliberate poisoning/ordeal poisons - the latter I may cover in the future, as culturally they’re fascinating) that have plagued mankind since we took our first bite of food.

While many nutritional disorders are due to a lack of food, some are due to an excess of a toxin from some food that the body can’t process. The staple foods that end up harming people when over-consumed or not properly processed often are eaten or poorly prepared as a result of famine, and just like nutritional deficiencies, many still plague the world today.

Nutritional Disorders - Deficiencies:

• Beriberi: Thiamine (Vitamin B1) - Extreme fatigue, difficulty walking, and confusion/difficulty speaking are the primary symptoms. Also can cause heart failure, vasodilation, peripheral edema, nystagmus (involuntary eye twitching), and tingling sensation in limbs.

• Goiter: Iodine - Swelling of thyroid gland. Rarely fatal, but can cause severe deformity and hypothyroidism.
• Rickets: Vitamin D, magnesium, phosphorus - Dental problems, skeletal deformity and stunting, muscle weakness, swollen wrists, bone pain, soft skull.
• Marasmus: All nutrients, especially protein - Tissue and muscle wasting, dry folds of skin hanging from buttocks and armpits, extreme adipose loss, voracious appetite
   
• Pellagra:Niacin (Vitamin B3) or tryptophan - “The four D’s”: Diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. Causes extreme sunlight sensitivity, pale skin that breaks out in blisters/keratinitis upon sun exposure, insomnia, aggression, as weakness. (Basically, they’re crazy pissed-off vampires.)
   
• Tetany: Calcium deficiency or phosphate excess - Involuntary contraction of muscles due to increased action potential of neuronal membranes, due to low plasma calcium, which increases membrane permeability to sodium, causing progressive depolarization. It’s complicated. It’s basically involuntary and painful stiffened muscles.
   
• Kwashiorkor: Protein calories - Pedal edema, distended abdomen, lack of adipose tissue, anorexia (as opposed to marasmus, where the child wants to eat everything), loss of hair and teeth. More common in wetter climates, marasmus more common in dry climates.
   
• Scurvy: Vitamin C - Lethargy, spots on skin, paleness, spongy gums, fever, bleeding of mucous membranes. Eventually causes open and pus-oozing wounds, tooth loss, jaundice, neuropathy, and death.
   
• Keshan Disease: Selenium - Fosters a mutated strain of coxsackie B virus which causes pulmonary edema and heart failure, mostly in women of child-bearing age and in children. Can be cured with selenium supplementation

Nutritional Disorders - Toxicity:

• Lathyrism: Untreated grass pea - Causes an inability to move the lower limbs. Not usually fatal on its own, but when it occurs in concert with famine (as in the Spanish War of Independence), death from starvation sometimes occurs.
   
• Ackee Poisoning/Jamaican Vomiting Sickness: Unripe ackee fruit - Intense thirst, nausea and vomiting, tachycardia, headache, general weakness, and confusion/stupor. Death can follow in just 12 hours. Caused by hypoglycin A and B in unripe fruit and mantle of fruit (even when ripe). General symptoms of hypoglycemia, similar to diabetes.
   
• Konzo: Cyanide intoxication from poorly treated cassava (manioc) - “Bound legs” - extreme hypertonia in leg muscles. Causes pain and very disturbed gait, but is not progressive, so does not cause death. Does generally disable the afflicted persons, and this can be debilitating (socio-economically and physiologically) to patients.
   
• Lytico-Bodig: Cycad nuts and seeds - Unique to Guam, far western Papua New Guinea, and Honshu, Japan. Parkinson-dementia complex, difficulty speaking, tremor, stiffness, loss of sense of smell, lethargy, memory loss. Caused by accumulation of BMAA from cyanobacteria that grows on cycads. Incurable. Has not been seen in those born past 1961, due to elimination of both cycad products and fruit bats (which feed on cycad flowers and accumulate BMAA in their own bodies).

How To Die at Work: 1875 edition.

biomedicalephemera:

Thanks again to Antiquus Morbis for the inspiration; many of these terms can also be found over there, in addition to hundreds of other causes of death.
————————————————————————-

Though the Occupational Safety and Health Act as we [in the US] know it has only existed since 1970, there have been differing levels of federal oversight in the workplace since the Bureau of Labor was created as part of the Department of the Interior in 1888, and the Department of Labor was established in 1913. Though their oversight may not have been as stringent as what we have now, and laws may not have protected people as they do today, it was certainly better than nothing.

So what was working before ANY oversight like? Well, here are a few ways you could have died from your occupation, assuming you didn’t get killed by falling, getting crushed, getting impaled, or straight up getting ripped apart by the machinery (read: I’m not covering industrial disasters today; they’re coming later):

Aluminosis/Kaolinosis - Fibriod phthisis caused by the inhalation of clay dust.

Brass Founder’s Ague - A debilitating fever (often cyclical, like ague) caused by inhalation of the fumes of burned-down zinc, copper, or magnesium, in brass foundries.

Byssinosis - A lung disease caused by inhalation of cotton fiber dust or other vegetable fiber dust (flax, hemp, sissal). Leads to coughing, wheezing, progressive lung scarring and narrowing of the airways, and eventually death. Death isn’t so much due to the scarring, but more because of the highly reduced ability to fight pulmonary infections. Was particularly common in young girls and women, especially those in thread factories.

Caisson Disease - Spinal affection caused by either moving from a condensed atmosphere underground or a pressurized diving apparatus into the ground-level atmosphere again. Often occurs in conjunction with “The Bends”. Known as Diver’s Paralysis.

Cancer Scroti - …this is an awful one. A cancer noted by Percival Potts, affecting primarily chimney sweeps. Scrotal cancer, often appearing around puberty. Unfortunately was often treated as if it was a venereal disease, which wouldn’t have helped anything. Often led to the cancer spreading to the lymph nodes, leading to death before 18. Also known as Soot wart.

Danbury Shakes/Hatter’s Shakes - Symptoms of inhalation mercury poisoning exhibited by the hat-makers in Danbury, CT (the hat capital of the world in the 1800s). Often involved shaking, delirium, slurring speech, twitching, and a lurching gait. Sometimes these guys were mistaken for drunks.

Lacemaker’s Disease - Lead poisoning sometimes found in lace-makers.

Mad Hatter’s Syndrome - Differs from Danbury Shakes in that it more often leads to death, and is more often caused by unintentional ingestion of mercury (rather than inhalation). Involves severe ataxia, gastrointestinal symptoms, and emotional instability, in addition to the symptoms of Hatter’s Shakes. 

Matches Disease - Oh god. Phossy jaw. Will do a full post on this and radium jaw soon. Caused by working with and inhaling the dust of white/yellow phosphorous, which was the primary ingredient in matches for a long time. Young girls and unmarried women were the primary makers of matches, and ended up the most affected by this disease. In the end, your jaw basically rots off and you go crazy and then you die. Also known as Phosphorus necrosis.

Potter’s Rot - Known as silicosis today. Caused by inhalation of silica particles often found in clay. Silica embeds itself deep in the alveolar sacs (meaning that it cant be coughed out), and the body, trying to get rid of the irritant, becomes inflamed and deposits collagen around the silica. This causes fibrotic nodules in the lungs, respiratory insufficiency, severe cough, fever, right ventricle heart disease, weight loss, and cyanosis. Silicosis leads to a significantly increased risk of tuberculosis and cancer, as well as mycobacterial infections. Also known as slate-worker’s lung/sandblaster’s asthma.

Ptilosis - Another form of fibroid phthisis, caused by inhalation of feather dust and down dust. In the ostrich feather industry of South Africa (which aside from pen quills, had a huge boom around 1880 thanks to the fashions of the time - feathers were prominent for over a decade, and came back in style frequently), this was particularly prevalent.

Rag Sorter’s/Rag-Picker’s Disease - Anthrax. Should do a post on the history of anthrax soon. Really interesting topic. Rag sorters were the women who sorted rags in the paper factories. Rag sorter’s disease often manifested itself as cutaneous anthrax, but pulmonary (inhalation) anthrax was not uncommon.

Sailor’s Fever - Yellow Fever. Almost always acquired in the tropics.

Silo-Filler’s Lung - Acute bronchiolitis fibrosa obliterans, caused by inhaling high levels of nitrogen oxides. Recently-filled silos have very high levels of nitrogen dioxide (which is one reason why you never want to be in a poorly-ventilated silo). Nitrous fume intoxication causes cough and shortness of breath, followed by high fever, chills, and a more serious shortness of breath. Death from pulmonary edema following the second phase was not uncommon.

Woolsorter’s “Pneumonia” - Inhalation anthrax. Anthrax spores are soil-borne, and when wool is sorted, it still carries the environmental dirt and grime that the sheep (who largely live outdoors) pick up. As the dirt is knocked free, soil-borne spores are also released. The sheep didn’t necessarily have to be infected itself to pick up anthrax spores as it lay on the ground. Though mortality rates from pulmonary anthrax hover around 45% these days thanks to early diagnosis, improved treatment, and (most of all) Pasteur’s anthrax vaccine for livestock, historic mortality rates were ~92%. Pretty awful thing to catch in the workplace.

Ways to Die: Poisonous Plants

Humans have been out to get each other since before we were even Homo sapiens sapiens. For the strong and the brash, there was always outright physical violence; a club to the head or a knife to the throat was a simple way to destroy an unsuspecting rival.

But humanity had more than just violence at its disposal. Those inclined to plan and use their brains over their brawn found that there was an easier way to kill, one that would not risk their own body in an attack, or let others know who killed their rival, or even if the rival was killed by another person in the first place.

Enter: POISONS. Historically largely derived from plants, humans have murdered each other, and at times themselves, using various species of plants. There is an expansive list of plants that can potentially kill a human, but a few have gained reputations over the millenia as premier agents of death…

• Aconitum spp. - Wolfsbane or Monkshood: A genus of over 250 beautifully flowering plants, closely related to the buttercup. Grows throughout Eurasia, cultivated worldwide.
  
  Aconitum sp. was used by the Ainu of Japan to hunt bears, and A. napellus is used by the Minaro of Ladakhi to hunt ibex. A probable culprit in multiple Borgia murders. Large doses are almost instantaneously fatal. Causes poisoning similar to that of pufferfish - tetrodotoxin-sensitive channels are open, and flaccid paralysis will quickly ensue following exposure.
  
  
• Cicuta maculata - Spotted Water Hemlock, Snakeweed, or Spotted Cowbane: The most deadly plant in North America, due to its roots occasionally being mistaken for wild parsnip.
  Ageratina altissima killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother, due to its ingestion by a cow whose milk she drank. A relative of C. maculata, Conium maculatum (poison hemlock) was used in the death sentence of Socrates.
  
  
• Datura stramonium - Jimsonweed, Thorn Apple, or Locoweed: A member of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family. Found mostly in North America, but other species of Datura exist in the rest of the Americas. Contains atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine, which lead to a complete inability to differentiate reality and fantasy (delirium - not hallucination as many people allege), tachycardia, hyperthermia, and bizarre/violent behavior patterns.
  
  Tea made from Datura plants is sometimes alleged by quacks to be medicinally beneficial. It is not. Multiple people have come very close to death, and two (known) people have died in the United States because they thought it would have some positive hallucinogenic or medicinal effect upon them. The very unpleasant taste of the beans leads to few accidental deaths due to ingestion.
  
  
• Strychnos nux-vomica - Strychnine Tree: Ahh, strychnine. Used as a poison in India from ancient times, and the source of a most unpleasant and violent death (or near-death episode). Strychnine causes prolonged grand mal seizures, due to the entire motor ganglia of the spinal cord being stimulated at one time, once the toxin makes it to the bloodstream.
  
  Currently still used as a rodent poison in many parts of the world, but illegal in the United States. One of the most common agents of domestic murder in India and Pakistan today. Easily detected by mass spectroscopy, but despite several dozen murders in the US and Indoasian countries, specific testing for the agent is still not routine in those suspected to be poisoned.
  
  
• Ricinus communis - Castor oil Plant: Indigenous to the Mediterranean, East Africa, and India. The attractive flowers have made this tree a popular installation in gardens throughout all tropical regions. This is where the toxic agent ricin comes from. This causes an extremely painful death, with convulsions, and intense conscious pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and spasms.
  
  While its use in Africa as a “trial-by-fire” agent (if one did not die from ingesting the beans, they were innocent) has been around for centuries, its emergence in the West is relatively recent. In 1971, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was shot in the leg with a pellet of concentrated ricin from a weapon concealed inside an umbrella, and died four days later. Since then, over a dozen in the Western world have been convicted of murdering others with crushed castor beans, and several dozen other incidents are suspected.

Sources:

Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart

A Modern Herbal. Mrs. M. Grieve, 1931.

Plants and Civilization. Maintained by Prof. Arthur C. Gibson, from 1985 textbook.

Cause of Death: Tympanites

From Antiquus Morbus:

A distention of the abdomen resulting from the accumulation of gas or air in the intestine or peritoneal cavity. Also called tympany.

From a 1760 English death record:

You also encounter the term “tympanum” when you look at the ear drum, so you can probably see the general etymology already. From Etymonline:

Tympanum: “drum of the ear,” 1610s, from M.L. tympanum, introduced in this sense by Italian anatomist Gabriello Fallopio (1523-1562), from L. tympanum “drum,” from Gk. tympanon “a drum, panel of a door,” from root of typtein “to beat, strike” (same root word as “type”)

Found in death records most commonly between 1700 and 1800, often referred to as “bloat” thereafter (and actually, in England at least, it was noted as “bloat” before ~1650, as well).

Who died of this?

This is the same “bloat” that you have to work to prevent in big dogs, but it’s good to note that (from what I can find), it was definitely not a common way to die. In humans, to cause the abdomen to distend to the point that it can be considered “tympanic” (drum-like and filled with air), most people would have to consume massive amounts of food or drink at one time. The full death records that I can find involving tympany or bloat all seem to come from upper-class or royal men. This is not surprising, as many of these people had massive banquets frequently (if not every night), and eating huge quantities was expected. If you’re at a banquet and already drunk off the king’s finest wines, you probably aren’t going to chew your food too well, which definitely adds to the risk of tympanites.

Why did this kill them?

When the body is presented with a massively full stomach of air or food, the pyloric sphincter can fail to respond correctly, and a clog in the pylorus (right before the pyloric sphincter) occurs. The backup of food in the stomach can cause gas distention (tympanites!), which would be the primary symptom obvious to any attending physician or anatomist. Less obviously, twisting of the stomach (volvulus) can prevent belching or vomiting to relieve gas distention, can cause lots of pressure on surrounding blood vessels, and can kill off stomach tissue due to lack of blood. The bloat and volvulus are also known to cause pressure on the portal vein, meaning that the liver cannot clean out the toxins in the blood, and the patient can die of sepsis.

So what’s the actual cause of death?

Basically, there were lots of underlying causes of death in “tympanites” or “tympany”, but they generally seem to have been caused by gluttony of the upper classes. Like I mentioned, sepsis and necrosis of the stomach tissue (which would have led to sepsis in the end, too) would not have been uncommon root causes. Hypotension (due to the blood unable to flow back to the heart from the stomach), general shock, and peritonitis also could have also been the true cause of death.

The similarity is that they either showed themselves in the form of a massively distended gut, or actually caused the drum-like abdomen itself, and generally under the same circumstances. I guess you could call it an “occupational hazard” of the royalty and their diplomatic “duties” of hosting giant feasts! Or you could just say they were gluttonous pigs who should have learned to chew their food.

Ways to Die: Nutritional Disorders

I’ll be elaborating on all of these conditions soon, but here’s the 30,000 ft overview of some significant nutritional disorders (aside from allergies and deliberate poisoning/ordeal poisons - the latter I may cover in the future, as culturally they’re fascinating) that have plagued mankind since we took our first bite of food.

While many nutritional disorders are due to a lack of food, some are due to an excess of a toxin from some food that the body can’t process. The staple foods that end up harming people when over-consumed or not properly processed often are eaten or poorly prepared as a result of famine, and just like nutritional deficiencies, many still plague the world today.

Nutritional Disorders - Deficiencies:

• Beriberi: Thiamine (Vitamin B1) - Extreme fatigue, difficulty walking, and confusion/difficulty speaking are the primary symptoms. Also can cause heart failure, vasodilation, peripheral edema, nystagmus (involuntary eye twitching), and tingling sensation in limbs.

• Goiter: Iodine - Swelling of thyroid gland. Rarely fatal, but can cause severe deformity and hypothyroidism.
• Rickets: Vitamin D, magnesium, phosphorus - Dental problems, skeletal deformity and stunting, muscle weakness, swollen wrists, bone pain, soft skull.
• Marasmus: All nutrients, especially protein - Tissue and muscle wasting, dry folds of skin hanging from buttocks and armpits, extreme adipose loss, voracious appetite
   
• Pellagra:Niacin (Vitamin B3) or tryptophan - “The four D’s”: Diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. Causes extreme sunlight sensitivity, pale skin that breaks out in blisters/keratinitis upon sun exposure, insomnia, aggression, as weakness. (Basically, they’re crazy pissed-off vampires.)
   
• Tetany: Calcium deficiency or phosphate excess - Involuntary contraction of muscles due to increased action potential of neuronal membranes, due to low plasma calcium, which increases membrane permeability to sodium, causing progressive depolarization. It’s complicated. It’s basically involuntary and painful stiffened muscles.
   
• Kwashiorkor: Protein calories - Pedal edema, distended abdomen, lack of adipose tissue, anorexia (as opposed to marasmus, where the child wants to eat everything), loss of hair and teeth. More common in wetter climates, marasmus more common in dry climates.
   
• Scurvy: Vitamin C - Lethargy, spots on skin, paleness, spongy gums, fever, bleeding of mucous membranes. Eventually causes open and pus-oozing wounds, tooth loss, jaundice, neuropathy, and death.
   
• Keshan Disease: Selenium - Fosters a mutated strain of coxsackie B virus which causes pulmonary edema and heart failure, mostly in women of child-bearing age and in children. Can be cured with selenium supplementation

Nutritional Disorders - Toxicity:

• Lathyrism: Untreated grass pea - Causes an inability to move the lower limbs. Not usually fatal on its own, but when it occurs in concert with famine (as in the Spanish War of Independence), death from starvation sometimes occurs.
   
• Ackee Poisoning/Jamaican Vomiting Sickness: Unripe ackee fruit - Intense thirst, nausea and vomiting, tachycardia, headache, general weakness, and confusion/stupor. Death can follow in just 12 hours. Caused by hypoglycin A and B in unripe fruit and mantle of fruit (even when ripe). General symptoms of hypoglycemia, similar to diabetes.
   
• Konzo: Cyanide intoxication from poorly treated cassava (manioc) - “Bound legs” - extreme hypertonia in leg muscles. Causes pain and very disturbed gait, but is not progressive, so does not cause death. Does generally disable the afflicted persons, and this can be debilitating (socio-economically and physiologically) to patients.
   
• Lytico-Bodig: Cycad nuts and seeds - Unique to Guam, far western Papua New Guinea, and Honshu, Japan. Parkinson-dementia complex, difficulty speaking, tremor, stiffness, loss of sense of smell, lethargy, memory loss. Caused by accumulation of BMAA from cyanobacteria that grows on cycads. Incurable. Has not been seen in those born past 1961, due to elimination of both cycad products and fruit bats (which feed on cycad flowers and accumulate BMAA in their own bodies).

How To Die at Work: 1875 edition.

Thanks again to Antiquus Morbis for the inspiration; many of these terms can also be found over there, in addition to hundreds of other causes of death.
————————————————————————-

Though the Occupational Safety and Health Act as we [in the US] know it has only existed since 1970, there have been differing levels of federal oversight in the workplace since the Bureau of Labor was created as part of the Department of the Interior in 1888, and the Department of Labor was established in 1913. Though their oversight may not have been as stringent as what we have now, and laws may not have protected people as they do today, it was certainly better than nothing.

So what was working before ANY oversight like? Well, here are a few ways you could have died from your occupation, assuming you didn’t get killed by falling, getting crushed, getting impaled, or straight up getting ripped apart by the machinery (read: I’m not covering industrial disasters today; they’re coming later):

Aluminosis/Kaolinosis - Fibriod phthisis caused by the inhalation of clay dust.

Brass Founder’s Ague - A debilitating fever (often cyclical, like ague) caused by inhalation of the fumes of burned-down zinc, copper, or magnesium, in brass foundries.

Byssinosis - A lung disease caused by inhalation of cotton fiber dust or other vegetable fiber dust (flax, hemp, sissal). Leads to coughing, wheezing, progressive lung scarring and narrowing of the airways, and eventually death. Death isn’t so much due to the scarring, but more because of the highly reduced ability to fight pulmonary infections. Was particularly common in young girls and women, especially those in thread factories.

Caisson Disease - Spinal affection caused by either moving from a condensed atmosphere underground or a pressurized diving apparatus into the ground-level atmosphere again. Often occurs in conjunction with “The Bends”. Known as Diver’s Paralysis.

Cancer Scroti - …this is an awful one. A cancer noted by Percival Potts, affecting primarily chimney sweeps. Scrotal cancer, often appearing around puberty. Unfortunately was often treated as if it was a venereal disease, which wouldn’t have helped anything. Often led to the cancer spreading to the lymph nodes, leading to death before 18. Also known as Soot wart.

Danbury Shakes/Hatter’s Shakes - Symptoms of inhalation mercury poisoning exhibited by the hat-makers in Danbury, CT (the hat capital of the world in the 1800s). Often involved shaking, delirium, slurring speech, twitching, and a lurching gait. Sometimes these guys were mistaken for drunks.

Lacemaker’s Disease - Lead poisoning sometimes found in lace-makers.

Mad Hatter’s Syndrome - Differs from Danbury Shakes in that it more often leads to death, and is more often caused by unintentional ingestion of mercury (rather than inhalation). Involves severe ataxia, gastrointestinal symptoms, and emotional instability, in addition to the symptoms of Hatter’s Shakes. 

Matches Disease - Oh god. Phossy jaw. Will do a full post on this and radium jaw soon. Caused by working with and inhaling the dust of white/yellow phosphorous, which was the primary ingredient in matches for a long time. Young girls and unmarried women were the primary makers of matches, and ended up the most affected by this disease. In the end, your jaw basically rots off and you go crazy and then you die. Also known as Phosphorus necrosis.

Potter’s Rot - Known as silicosis today. Caused by inhalation of silica particles often found in clay. Silica embeds itself deep in the alveolar sacs (meaning that it cant be coughed out), and the body, trying to get rid of the irritant, becomes inflamed and deposits collagen around the silica. This causes fibrotic nodules in the lungs, respiratory insufficiency, severe cough, fever, right ventricle heart disease, weight loss, and cyanosis. Silicosis leads to a significantly increased risk of tuberculosis and cancer, as well as mycobacterial infections. Also known as slate-worker’s lung/sandblaster’s asthma.

Ptilosis - Another form of fibroid phthisis, caused by inhalation of feather dust and down dust. In the ostrich feather industry of South Africa (which aside from pen quills, had a huge boom around 1880 thanks to the fashions of the time - feathers were prominent for over a decade, and came back in style frequently), this was particularly prevalent.

Rag Sorter’s/Rag-Picker’s Disease - Anthrax. Should do a post on the history of anthrax soon. Really interesting topic. Rag sorters were the women who sorted rags in the paper factories. Rag sorter’s disease often manifested itself as cutaneous anthrax, but pulmonary (inhalation) anthrax was not uncommon.

Sailor’s Fever - Yellow Fever. Almost always acquired in the tropics.

Silo-Filler’s Lung - Acute bronchiolitis fibrosa obliterans, caused by inhaling high levels of nitrogen oxides. Recently-filled silos have very high levels of nitrogen dioxide (which is one reason why you never want to be in a poorly-ventilated silo). Nitrous fume intoxication causes cough and shortness of breath, followed by high fever, chills, and a more serious shortness of breath. Death from pulmonary edema following the second phase was not uncommon.

Woolsorter’s “Pneumonia” - Inhalation anthrax. Anthrax spores are soil-borne, and when wool is sorted, it still carries the environmental dirt and grime that the sheep (who largely live outdoors) pick up. As the dirt is knocked free, soil-borne spores are also released. The sheep didn’t necessarily have to be infected itself to pick up anthrax spores as it lay on the ground. Though mortality rates from pulmonary anthrax hover around 45% these days thanks to early diagnosis, improved treatment, and (most of all) Pasteur’s anthrax vaccine for livestock, historic mortality rates were ~92%. Pretty awful thing to catch in the workplace.

Ways to Die: Erysipelas

Erysipelas:

A skin infection, typically caused by an acute streptococcal infection (typically Streptococcus pyogenes), characterized by hot skin, fever, infected dermis and lymphatics, and when the infection reaches deeper tissues, can lead to serious complications. Erysipelas can often lead to dissection of the dermis from the epidermis. Basically the skin gets removed from its base and forms a bubble. Erysipelas can also be present at the onset of gangrene.

The skin also takes on a peau-de-orange appearance where the infection has spread - it looks like the skin of an orange peel in texture.

[Illustration from A Manual of Pathology. Joseph Coats & Lewis K. Sutherland, 1900.]

In our age of antibiotics and prophylactics and cleanliness, it’s very rare that erysipelas leads to severe complications, but it was a very dangerous condition to acquire in centuries past.

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