Some of the diseases named in Graunt's Bills of Mortality

Bloody flux: blood in the stools, see dysentery.

Bursten: hernia or rupture.

Chrisoms - Infant who died before or shortly after baptism

Falling Sickness - Epilepsy

French Pox - Venereal disease

Gravel: a disease characterised by small stones which are formed in the kidneys, passed along the ureters to the bladder, and expelled with the urine. See also stranguary. Synonym: kidney stone. Sandy matter concreted in the kidneys.

Headmouldshot: this is when the sutures of the skull, generally the coronal, ride: that is, have their edges shot over one another; which is frequent in infants and occasions convulsions and death. Such injury would result from difficulties in childbirth. Ricketts caused by vitamin D deficiency in addition to causing bow legs also caused deformations of the pelvis. In a woman this could make child birth more difficult than usual. The obstetric forceps were introduced into more general use in the middle of the 18th century.

Horseshoehead - Inflammation of the brain

Imposthume: a collection of purulent matter in a bag or cyst.

Kings evil: scrofula, a tubercular infection of the throat lymph glands. The name originated in the time of Edward the Confessor, with the belief that the disease could be cured by the touch of the king of England. A scrofulous distemper, in which the glands are ulcerated, commonly believed to be cured by the touch of a king. Dr. Johnson suffered from it as a boy and was touched for it by Queen Anne. She was the last monarch to touch for the King's evil. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the infected gland was lanced and drained. This often lead to a noticeable scar on the neck as the wound might continue to seep for a time.

Livergrown: having a great liver. (Possibly as a result of high alcohol consumption!)

Loosness - Dysentery

Overlaid - Infants suffocated when their mother or nurse rolls over on them in bed

Planet Struck - Paralytic, confounded

Purples: spots of a livid colour, which break out in malignant fevers.

Quinsy: an acute inflammation of the soft palate around the tonsils, often leading to an abscess. Synonyms: suppurative tonsillitis, cynanche tonsillaris, paristhmitis, sore throat. A tumid inflammation in the throat, which sometimes produces suffocation.

Rising of the Lights: croup - any obstructive condition of the larynx or trachea (windpipe), characterised by a hoarse, barking cough and difficult breathing, occurring chiefly in infants and children.

Stone - Gall-stones

Stranguary: restricted urine flow. A difficulty of urine attended with pain. This could have included bladder stones. See also gravel.

Thrush: a disease in which there are white spots and ulcers in the mouth, and on the tongue, caused by a parasitic fungus, Candida albicans. There is a similar condition of the vagina. Synonyms: aphthae, sore mouth, aphthous stomatitis. Small round superficial ulcerations, which first appear in the mouth.

Tissick - Consumption

Tympany: A kind of obstructed flatulence that swells the body like a drum.

source - Rictor Norton, Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports: A Sourcebook, "Bills of Mortality", 19 December 2001
see also: Glossary of Medical Terms