Note 224 — BILLS OF MORTALITY.

Many of the diseases are absolutely unintelligible under their present designation; such, for instance, as Headmoldshot; horse-shoe head; over-grown head; rising of the lights, &c. others are barbarous, as liver-grown; twisting of the guts, &c. others again are far too indefinitely expressed to be admitted as specific diseases, of which aged; bed-ridden; bile; colds; may serve as examples. “Fevers of all kinds” is a little too sweeping and indiscriminate. “Abortives and still-born” united, form a large number in the general annual bill, the absurdity of which is apparent. Child-bed is a formidable article in the bill, and is liable to much misinterpretation and error; all women dying within the month after delivery are indiscriminately classed under child-bed, whether they die in actual labour, or subsequently of acute fever, consumption, or any other disorder. Infants dying before baptism are not returned by the parish clerks in the bills of mortality. In the old bills they were entered under the denomination of Chrysoms, but this title has been long disused. See Burrows’s Strictures, p. 53.