Overflow incontinence happens when your bladder gets so full that the sphincters are not strong enough to hold back the pressure and you pee yourself. In other words the muscle would give before the bladder ruptures. I came across a thread about Tycho’s death on Reddit and virtually no one was calling bullshit on the story that he died of a burst bladder because he was embarrassed to go to the bathroom during a banquet.
At first I thought this was about Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade and was genuinely confused for a minute…
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 2 minutes ago
Yeah the urinary bladder doesn’t just stop working and burst. There will have been an underlying cause, but it was not picked up at the time so now all we have is a garbled version of how he died.
People can go into acute urinary retention - where they are unable to pass urine. That can be extremely painful and it can lead to rupture if it’s totally untreated.
But it doesn’t just happen - and choosing not to go to the toilet is not going to cause it. Underlying causes might be prostate enlargement (common), a kidney stone getting trapped in the urethra or bladder neck, or cancers of the prostate, bladder or bowel, amongst others.
In the modern era urinary retention is easily diagnosed with an ultrasound and usually a CT to assess for causes. Urinary catheterisation can be performed either through the urethra or a suprapubic catheter through the skin to bypass the blockage.
None of that was available when he was alive - he’d just have been in extreme agony and there was little anyone would know to do. When he died they might have done an autopsy and found the burst bladder but workinf out what happened would be difficult and depend on the skill and knowledge of the person who did the autopsy.
So it’s extremely unlikely he died because he didn’t go to the toilet during a banquet. Something else happened that precipitated his urinary retention and eventual bladder perforation.
Once the bladder perforated he was a dead man as there was nothing they could do to repair the bladder or clean out the abdomen in that period. He’d have rapidly become more ill and died from infection and organ failure.