How does one die of shock? I'm curious if this is just an old medical description or possibly the weakness of a 7-month old baby at the time.
[0]: https://www.allbestessays.com/essay/Solving-a-Mystery-of-400...
Mythbusters often highlighted this when working with explosions by using rupture disks at different distances from the explosion to measure the amount of damage incurred due to the pressure wave.
https://www.flowcontrolnetwork.com/news-reports/article/1555...
But the cause of death of the heir is far more profoundly vague, linguistically, although at the same time more specific.
He died of shock. (medical condition)
He died of the shock. (single, definitive event, e.g., fright or shock wave)
Might be reading too much into it, but lends credence to the shock wave interpretation. Anyone have access to the original text? Might clear it up.
皇貴妃任娘娘所居之室器物隕落，任娘娘於天啟五年十月初一日所生皇第三子，於是日受驚後遂薨逝
Translates roughly (with the caveat that my Literary Chinese sucks) as:
In the imperial consort Lady Ren's living quarters, things fell down and the emperor's third son she had given birth to on the first day of the tenth month of 1625, having been shocked on that day, subsequently passed away.
The paragraph I took that quote from begins with the description of a dragon sighting four years earlier, which might give you an idea of how reliable that source is.