The Josselins

Ralph Josselin was the vicar (clergy) of Earls Colne in Essex, northeast of London, from 1640-1683.  Married to Jane Constable, they had 10 live-born children, 5 of whom died before he did.  Ralph was interested in medicine, and interestingly enough for us, he kept an extensive diary (Beier, 101-28).  Although his depictions of his family, friends, servants, neighbors, and relations and their illnesses are about 100 years before early Methodist medicine, they will give us a good feeling for health care in both centuries.

Jane and Ralph were both very concerned when she drew near to having a baby.  Breech presentations, stalling of labor, and the baby getting stuck in the birth canal almost always meant the mother and baby died.  Both midwives and barber-surgeons caused more pain, either the midwives trying to hurry up labor or the surgeon's use of instruments to cut out the dead child when it did not deliver naturally (Beier, 105).  Jane's health got much better once she finished childbearing, and she outlived Ralph (107).

Childhood was tough.  One of their babies died at 10 days old, one at 13 months.  The eldest child, Mary, died at 8 years old from worms.  She also had worms at age 3 and her brother John had them at age 4.  Two of the children had rickets, one had what was possibly mumps, three of them had "colds nigh chincolds" that may have been whooping cough, and the measles struck two children and the maid.  Although nobody got smallpox while they were home in Essex, when 4 of the children went to London they caught it there.  Only 15 year old Thomas had to return home to be nursed (108).  Due to the 6 fireplaces for heat and the use of candles for light, the children either caught their clothing on fire or fell into the fire 6 times, fortunately all without serious damage (109).  Thomas returned home again at age 29, possibly with consumption, and died 2 months later.  Ann died at age 19 and again the cause was unknown (113-14).

Ralph had two chronic conditions and multiple minor but still scary illnesses.  At times he had runny eyes, a sore tongue, a pain in his chest, groin swelling, and occasional sore bones (111-12).  He also had an episode of severe depression that lasted a spring to summer (115).  The first chronic problem was a swelling of his navel that lasted from September 1648 to April 1652.  He worried about it, writing he had "heard of one [man] that after two years [of] illness was killed with a rawness in his navel, but god* shall heal me of this infirmity."  It did eventually heal.

Ralph also had swelling and an ulcer on his left leg, which probably was the cause of his death.  It was diagnosed as scurvy and dropsy.  He suffered for 10 years with pain, swelling, healing and then recurring sores, and ultimately a swollen and painful leg with a distended abdomen, shortness of breath, a "great and dangerous cough," and double vision.  He died at age 67 (112-13).

Depiction of dropsy on the left and scurvy on the right.  (Source: Wellcome Library, London).

 

 

 

*Capitalizing "God" was not common at the time Ralph wrote.