Well, so long as nobody gets consumption (tuberculosis), or … [meaningful silence] (cancer).
Scrofula, also known as the king’s evil (because it was thought being given a coin by a king or queen would cure you), is its own disease (Mycobacterial cervical lymphadenitis, or a mycobacterial infection of the lymph nodes of the neck) but is very often caused by tuberculosis.
Also seen in old works: A ‘social disease’ or ‘VD’ is any kind of venereal disease (STD); ‘the clap’ refers more specifically to gonorrhea. ‘Pox’ or ‘The Great Pox’ is syphilis, in some contexts, which was also called ‘The French Disease’.
Taking a different tack: Scurvy is vitamin C deficiency. Kwash, mentioned in The Grapes of Wrath, is kwashiorkor, which is protein deficiency. Beriberi, caused by replacing brown rice with white or being an alcoholic, is vitamin B[sub]1[/sub] (thiamine) deficiency. Finally, getting back to “old novel diseases”, rickets is vitamin D deficiency, but that’s fairly well-known by now.
Sadly, shingles is not an old-fashioned disease. One third of all adults will have shingles.
I’m in the middle of my second shingles attack since August. The first one was so painful it was worse than passing a stone. This one just itches from my waist to my ankle on my right side. All day. All night. Although the pain in my knee was so bad initially I could barely walk, that only lasted a few hours.
There’s a shingles vaccine which you can get as early as fifty. I’m unfortunately one of the 10% it didn’t work on. Please get the shingles vaccine.
I’ve suffered from chilblains since I was a teen. I haven’t tried prescription medication, only ‘natural’ treatments, and the only one that seems to help is eating cayenne pepper (2-3 tsps per day. Not just like that, on food of course). I guess if you’re a fan of hot food any chillie form will do, it’s the capsaicin that supposedly improves blood circulation.
Not long ago I read that chilblains are actually a sort of allergic reaction to cold. So recently when I started to get an attack I tried taking some antihistamine, and it cleared right up!
My kid had croup when he was four, and suddenly started having so much trouble breathing, we had to call 911. They asked if he was up to date on his Hib vaccine (he was). He ended up spending the night in the hospital. He had pinpoint hemorrhages all over his chest and cheeks from sucking so hard when he was trying to breath.
I had dropsy after my c-section. I looked fatter than I did before the baby was born, and my legs were frighteningly huge. I have catarrh right now. Happens to me whenever it’s really cold, especially when the temperature is up and down a lot, like it’s been recently. We have a day when it’s 33’F, then the next day it’s 4’F.
In the play The Miracle Worker, Helen Keller’s disease that leaves her deaf and blind is “acute congestion of the stomach and brain.” I have no idea if that’s taken from an historical document, though.
For a long time, I was naive enough to think that all those patent medicines for “bad blood” were for anemia, and I wondered why it was such a problem at the turn of the century-- vitamin C deficiency, sure, but iron? someone finally clued me in that while “tired blood” was a 1950s term for anemia, “bad blood” was an old euphemism for syphilis. Apparently the “active” ingredient in many patent medicines for syphilis was arsenic. And people thought they worked, because syphilis can be dormant for a long time after the initial symptoms.
Since many herbal concoctions won’t dissolve well in water but will in alcohol, a lot of those patent medicines were so tee-totaling women could get a good stiff drink every day.
