What’s your most anticipated banger?
“Cancer, and Wolf.”
What?…. What?
Cancer, and Wolf, refers to the old common term for cancer: wolf. It was thought to be a parasite that ate up the afflicted, like a wolf.
“Have you been bitten by or interacted with any wolves recently, Mr. Jacobs?”
“No, I’ve never actually even seen a wolf in real life.”
“I see, then we seem to have misdiagnosed you, it turns out that you have lymphoma and you’re a liar. Now take this cocaine and get out of my office.”
Sounds weird from today’s perspective, but actually refers to two notorious murderers that terrorized people at land and sea. You could protect yourself from either the cancer’s claw or the wolf’s tooth, but not both.
What the fuck is “Teeth” about?
It’s the same as chrisomes. Infant mortality was so high, the ones who died without obvious cause just get lumped together by age group.
Chrisomes refers to those who died within the first month, during the time they’d be baptised. The baptismal cloth, the chrisome, would often be just as a burial shroud.
Teeth meant they were old enough to have one or more teeth, 6-24 months. Teething was thought to be potentially fatal because so many infants died during that period. Correlation, causation, yadda yadda yadda.
Tooth infections can be very deadly if left untreated and quite honestly the treatments weren’t much better.
The fact that infants dying is the highest by far just shows how cruel nature is without modern medicine and birthing practices
in college, i did a fair amount of number crunching on mortality statistics and the demographic transition. here’s some numbers i remember from the 1700s:
life expectancy: 40
life expectancy at age 20: 72
modern medicine has not added much to our longevity, we’ve just gotten rid of childhood mortality.I read somewhere that it’s actually an efficient method of nature … babies that won’t make it anyways die early so you waste fewer resources on them. it’s called fail fast
Funny, when you apply that to biology, I think it changes its name to “eugenics”.
Tuberculosis (consumption) was another constant killer, coming in at second.
I’ve spent more time than I care to admit reading Wikipedia entries on significant people from past centuries. Way too often their life story is full of disease and death. A dozen siblings. All of them suffer the same disease in childhood. Half of them don’t make it to adulthood. Mother dies during childbirth. Father struggles making money from their creative work, dies in a duel. Subject cared for by wealthy uncle. Is affected for the remainder of their life by the lingering effects of the childhood disease. Repeat for the next generation.
This is specifically a Dethklok track list. Some of these are kinda brutal.
Producer: Okay, but… “Teeth?”
Band: ::complaints and groans of disbelief::
Nathan: They’re like… bone knives. In your face. And kids lose their first set with blood and agony, and then you get even more. It’s so f—ing brutal. So we made a song about it.
Toki: Plus it’s important to teach the kids about brushing.
Swissgar: Yous don’t want to be losings your bone face knives.
Cancer (and wolf)
“Be careful, my relative tried chemo for the first time and died 3 days later to a wolf attack.”
The wolves can smell the chemo, it’s like marinade for them.
Hard to say which one finished them off. Better put both.
“Doctor why are you head banging?”
Worms :(
“dead in the street, and starved”
they still use colic to describe severe idiopathic abdominal pain
Planet.
“Sir how did your wife pass?”
“Planet.”
“pardon?”
“Mars got her.”
“Mars?”
“yes, The Planet. slings bow over his back and gathers arrows Mars.”
Weird that cancer and wolf are grouped together
Apparently, “wolf” was a metaphorical name for cancers which “devoured” flesh, as opposed to creating tumors, I guess.
I think it was lupus.
It’s never lupus.
Lupinus.
…but I mean that’s the band name “Cancer, and Wolf”
Seriously though, going over a reddit threat this was on, looks like “Wolf” referred to a fast-growing tumor that “ate you like a wolf” or somesuch.
https://old.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/f3c2hi/cause_of_deaths_in_london_in_1632/hkh904m/
I choose to interpret it literally
It’s definitely cooler that way, but also maybe in that regard “Cancer” means they were clawed to death by a giant crab?
why not both
I now imagine wolf cancer involves one of the two wolves inside you finally deciding to grow it’s own body
I would have died because teeth back then, for sure
It likely meant getting an abscess from an infected tooth which lead to sepsis. We’re really lucky to have modern medicine.
Oh, like that guy ICE killed recently.
Unfortunately, barbarism is alive and well in our world.
“King’s evil”
Political bars.
It was a lymph node disorder, commonly caused by tuberculosis.
The axe, or hanging, or drawing and quartering, etc. Not often old age in prison so much.
Everyone is caught up on Cancer and Wolf and I’m over here like… Burst and Rupture!!!
I think it’s like ruptured organs like an appendix bursting or something like that
i was going to suggest it might also be fistula but i see it listed separately
I like killed by several accidents.
Also teeth seems like a popular one.
