A Brief Lesson in the History of Medicine

Back in the olden days, it was not uncommon for people to die due to ruptured bibliographies.

Explanation: Back in ye olden days in the times of yore, the field of medicine, or "leechology" as they called it back then, was not as advanced as it is in our modern times. Surgery, or "bonesawing", was a new field and pharmicology was more holistic than scientific. The typical apothecary had more useless items in it than the organic food section of your local grocery store. Today's annoying maladies were deadly killers back then. Today's common cold was known as the "common death", poison ivy was known as the "itchy death", hangnail was known as "hangdeath", and a dental cavity was called "tooth plague". If the poor people of this bygone black-and-white era were lucky enough to escape death by one of these more common maladies, the hand of Death was waiting just around the corner with more serious illnesses, like tuberculosis ("whooping plague"), smallpox ("spotted plague"), and appendicitis ("end-of-the-book plague"). My great-great-grandfather survived a near-deadly case of tableofcontentsitis, only to be done in by a ruptured bibliography. It was truly a dark and poorly-cited chapter in the history of medicine.