There is something in the old registers which places us in an almost antediluvian world, and seems to treat of diseases belonging to another sphere. In 1657, among the deaths are recorded 1162 “chrisomes and infants;” and few reading in 1853 would know that infants, until christened, wore a “chrisom” or cloth anointed with holy unguent, from which they were denominated chrisomes. “Blasted and planet” would puzzle the medical student of to-day; but the latter was simply an abbreviation of “planet struck,” both words indicating some wasting disease which the faculty failed to fathom. “Head-mould-shot” and “horseshoe-head” were meant for water on the brain, and were very expressive of the shape of the head in those who suffered from it. Another complaint was “calenture,” a disease said to be similar to the _maladie du pays_, for it seized seamen with an irresistible desire to immerse themselves, the sea assuming in their eyes the appearance of green fields. “Tissick” expressed phthisis or consumption. In 1634, the “rickets” is recorded; and the “rising of the lights” has been a great puzzle to our medical historians. A little later than this period is mentioned, “one died from want in Newgate,” “one murdered in the pillory,” and “one killed in the pillory.” In the course of twenty years fifty-one are put down as starved. “But few are murdered, not above eighty-six of the deaths in twenty years; whereas, in Paris, few nights escape without their tragedy.” It must be remembered, in explanation, that medicine had not assumed the dignity of a science before the time of Harvey in the middle of the seventeenth century, but was exercised by “a great multitude of ignorant persons.” Common artificers, smiths, weavers, and women took upon them cures, “to the high displeasure of God, and destruction of many of the King’s liege people.” Nor was the patient much better off when the clergy, priests, and poor scholars left the cure of the mind for the cure of the body. Such, however, was the position of leech-craft when Graunt inoculated the people with the love of vital statistics.