Water tablets

Having something of a water retention problem, I take water tablets in the form of a large, twice daily dose of Furosemide. So I was interested to come across a rather grand tomb in Bunhill Fields this afternoon memorialising a water problem - and its solution - from three hundred years ago. If the inscription is to be believed, this lady was drained - by means unspecified, but presumably mechanical rather than chemical - of four (UK) gallons of water a month for more than five years.

The context.

The other side.

Bing knows all about it, turning up, inter alia, references 2 and 3, with reference 2 supplying the snap above. From there and elsewhere I learn that there are various complaints which result in massive water retention and tapping simply means sticking a suitable drain into a suitable place. Apart from the discomfort - not to say pain - involved, it looks as if the main risk was and is infection. Complaints which are still around today.

Reference 3 is a curious document, with the snap above being the anti-penultimate and penultimate pages: 2 pages of forward, 25 pages of funerary & improving sermon, 4 pages of oration, 3 pages of ode and 2 pages of advertisements for other offerings from the same printer - a printer whose business address appears to be a tavern. All this for 6d, that is to say 6 old pence or 2.5 new pence. All this as specified in the last will and testament of the deceased, Dame Mary Page.

PS: I might say there was talk of drains in my case at one point, but I am glad to say that it did not come to anything. And I was certainly not, in any case, in her league.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunhill_Fields.

Reference 2: https://ask.metafilter.com/329694/Tapd-66-times-What-did-Dame-Mary-Page-endure. 

Reference 3: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-funeral-sermon-occasio_harrison-thomas_1729/page/4/mode/2up.