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Graunt was particularly interested in the causes of death, especially "that extraordinary and grand Casualty" the plague, and in the way people lived under the constant threat of devastating epidemic. For the year 1632, for example, he listed nearly sixty different causes of death, with 628 deaths coming under the heading of "aged." The others range from "affrighted" and "bit with mad dog" (one each) to "worms," "quinsie," and "starved at nurse." There were only seven "murthers" in 1632 and just 15 suicides.

. . .

After commenting on the incidence of accidents -- most of which he asserts are occupation-related -- Graunt refers to "one Causalty in our Bills, or which though there be daily talk, [but] little effect." This casualty is the French-Pox -- a type of syphilis -- "gotten for the most part, not so much by the intemperate use of Venery (which rather casuses the Gowt) as of many common Women." Graunt wonders why the records show that so few died of it, as "a great part of men have, at one time or another, had some species of this disease." He concludes that most of the deaths from ulcers and sores were in fact caused by venereal disease, the recorded diagnoses serving as euphemisms. According to Graunt, a person had to be pretty far gone before the authorities acknowledged the true cause of death: "onely hated persons, and such, whose very Noses were eaten of, were reported ... to have died of this too frequent Maladie."

-- from P.L. Bernstein, Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk