For centuries, doctors struggled in the darkness over the causes of disease and death, and how the human body functioned. If a person died, because of the doctor's limited knowledge they could only describe the cause of death as a fever, apoplexy, or convulsions, or what he could visibly see such as a head wound, or evidence of a lifestyle such as over indulgence of drink.
Occasionally he would describe the cause of death as a Visitation of God. Used in a more religious time than ours, it meant the death was inexplicable and it was thought that God had decided that it was time for the person to die.
It later came to mean that the person died of natural causes.
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