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List of Undefined Terms |
Notes, Opinions and Possible Definitions |
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Air Swellings |
Gas swelled abdomen, bloated
intestines. |
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Axes |
The ague, generally fits or
attacks. |
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Bealing of Stomach |
? |
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Black Dog |
Depression. This term was
used by Sir Winston Churchill to describe his depression. |
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Black
Hives |
Cynanche Trachealis ? |
 |
Example from an 1882 Death
Record from Michigan |
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Bladder in Throat |
Diphtheria
? |
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Bleeding Tumor |
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 |
Example from an 1854 death certificate
from England: |
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Blue Lung |
This comes
from a book called "Primary Colors" by Alexander Theroux. In the
essay on the color blue, he writes: "And what about the dreadful
disease called Blue Lung? Hustler Minnesota Fats supposedly got
it from years of inhaling pool (cue) chalk. "That's the only
time I've heard of any such animal, but it makes perfect sense
to me. We have black lung and brown lung, why not blue too? And
chalk dust is easily inhaled and can't be good for you.
That’s a good one. I’ll have to
do some research on this. Of course pool chalk is usually blue
so it might be a related. |
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Blue Plague |
Typhus or Rocky Mountain Spotted
Fever. US servicemen in WW2 were vaccinated against this condition |
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Brain
Trouble |
The
original death record for Belle Gregory, Book C Page C 365
Kansas City, MO, May 5, 1904 states that she died of Brain
Trouble. Any clues on what that would be? |
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Broken Compensation |
Failure of Compensation. An
organic disease of the Heart. |
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Bull Hives |
Bold Hives, Stretch Hives, Little Red Hives |
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Choking Disease |
Diphtheria
? |
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Coast
fever |
from an account that happened in
Mozambique in 1854. |
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Continental fever |
? |
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Corals in their Hands |
"Red coral was regarded as
the proper material for a baby to cut its teeth on from the Middle
Ages until the end of the nineteenth century, when it was supplanted
by hard rubber and then by plastics. A child's teething stick was
often referred to as a coral." Thanks to Susan C. Mitchell for this
information. |
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Corn Rage |
The only condition that springs
to mind is ergot poisoning. Take a look at my entry for St Anthony's
Fire but also read below |
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Crop Sickness |
Sickness from an overextended
stomach, usually from excess eating or drinking. |
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Decay of Nature |
Debility |
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Distemper |
Always shown with this definition:
"Usually animal disease with malaise, discharge from nose and throat,
anorexia". If this is an animal disease, than what was the actual
disease that the person died from? |
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Distemper |
Used here in the historical
sense: Disturbed condition of the body or mind; ill health, illness;
a mental or physical disorder; a disease or ailment.
An excess of humor; humoral
imbalance.
www.appalachianherbalist.com |
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Dock Fever |
Venereal
disease. [Grose1823]. Dock: to lie with a woman. |
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Domestic Illness |
Mental breakdown, depression |
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Eating Ulcer |
Peptic ulcer, pain occurs
soon after eating. |
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Egyptian Dropsy |
? |
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Great White Plague |
Tuberculosis
? |
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Heart Sickness |
Condition caused by loss of
salt from body. Extreme depression of spirits. [Webster] |
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Heat Sickness |
A condition marked especially
by cessation of sweating and extremely high body temperature, caused
by a loss of salt from the body. |
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Hectical Complaint |
A remittent fever with stages
of chilliness, heat, and sweat; (rare) a person suffering with tuberculosis. |
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Holy Fire |
Saint Anthony’s Fire
? |
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Hoopp Disease |
Hooping
Cough
? Pertussis. |
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Example from
an 1881 Military Hospital record in Hampshire, England:
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Indian Rash |
My 67
year old wife, just disclosed that when she was a child
growing up in New Orleans in a orphans home, she as well as
many of the others girls in the school had a what they
called Indian Rash. They
treated this condition by wrapping them in gauze so to help
keep them from scratching the small blisters from what she
remembers. She remembers they were not allowed to
take baths, with this condition.
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Inward
Complaint |
Stomach or
Bowel Problem
?
(Appears
on a Scottish death record March 11 1843 for a child of 3-weeks
– she is buried at the Arbroath Abbey). |
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Jackson's
March |
This is a mistake copied from
list to list. Jacksonian March is the correct term. |
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Kidney Consumption |
Diabetes ? |
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Kruchhusten |
Another mistake copied from
list to list. Keuchhusten is the correct term. It is German for
Whooping cough. |
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Long sickness |
Tuberculosis
? |
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Lung sickness |
Tuberculosis
? |
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Madness disease |
Von Hippel-Lindau disease.
The most infamous feud in
American folklore, the long-running battle between the Hatfields
and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare, inherited disease
that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts. Dozens
of McCoy descendants apparently have the disease, which causes
high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too
much adrenaline and other "fight or flight" stress hormones. |
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Mariner disease |
Scurvy ? |
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Marking |
Fife (1976) offers the common
definition of marking: ...if a woman’s emotions get sufficiently
stirred up during pregnancy, then the fetus itself may feel and
register the shock as a blemish on the body, as a deformity, or
as a pattern or behavior. The mark frequently resembles the object
or circumstance which produced the mother’s emotional state (p.
273-74) |
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Meridian's Disease |
From an inquiry - "I have a great great grandfather who
died in the Civil War (Confederacy). He was probably in
Mississippi at the time, since that is the area where his unit
was stationed. His death record says he died of Meridian's
Disease. What is that. One contact located a woman who said it
was a heart problem, possibly valves, but when I checked her
reference, it did not seem to be there."
I have another possible explanation. Meridian is a name of a
town in Mississippi. It could refer to a common disease that ran
through the city in the 1800’s, possibly malaria or yellow
fever. |
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Michigan Rash |
From an article: "They referred
euphemistically to this cutaneous disease as a ‘breaking out’ an
‘impurity of the blood’ a ‘rash,’ and so on while perhaps the person
giving it these mild names was really putting into practice the
old peculiar manner of scratching that used to belong to something
worse than the ‘rash.’ " |
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Military fever |
? |
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Morbid
Sore Throat |
Probably
the same as Putrid Sore Throat or Diphtheria. (It
was mentioned in a book (historical fiction) about 18th century
Scotland.) |
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Morfine Cough |
Morphine Poisoning |
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Natural Causes |
Means a death not from homicide,
accident or suicide. Possibly issued by a coroner after an inquest.
As most coroners are lawyers rather than doctors, the certificates
they issue tend to be a verdict rather than a diagnosis. The policy
in the UK is to destroy inquest records after 30 years, although
some survive. Most UK inquests are reported by local newspapers,
which may but I don't think they are available abroad |
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Natural Decay |
Debility ? |
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Paravariola |
Alastrim ? |
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Plague of Europe |
Smallpox ? |
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???
Pneumonia |
Something
Pneumonia?
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Poverty Blood |
Pernicious Anemia
? |
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Putrid Flux |
Bacillary dysentery
? |
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Samoan Pox |
Alastrim ? |
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Shaded Birth |
Found term
- shaded birth - as cause of death of mother following death of
infant, probably stillborn. Occurred in IL probably in 1850s or
1860s. |
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Simple Smiling Jesus |
Spinal meningitis, the grimaces
that often accompany the disease make the interpreted name seem
reasonable ("folk" renderings for long names they hear but not quite
correctly) |
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Sinking Chills |
? |
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Solarisation |
Sunstroke?
Exposure to the rays of the sun.
[Webster] |
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Sore Throat Distemper |
Any of various inflammations
of the tonsils, pharynx, or larynx characterized by pain in swallowing |
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Splints |
Describes an illness where
there are swellings on the ribs. This could be rickets, where there
is swelling of the ribs where they join the breast bone (looks rather
like a necklace, so is often called a rachitic rosary) |
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Stock Shock |
This term was used in Kentucky
and may be some kind of animal related accident or head injury |
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Stop Disease |
? |
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Sumary Claflus |
This is from a 1901 Death
Certificate that was transcribed in 1975. The transcription is
incorrect but what could the Cause of Death be? Please take a
guess and email it to me. Thanks. |
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The Drier |
Cholera or any gastrointestinal
disorder causing death by dehydration (common in America during
the time of the Civil War) |
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Thrash |
Thrush ? |
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Throat Distemper |
Diphtheria or quinsy
? |
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Torpid Liver |
(Torpid -
In a state of torpor, or numbness; incapable of action, or
deprived of sensibility. [Thomas1875].) |
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Trench Nephritis |
Acute
nephritis, glomerulonephritis |
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War Nephritis |
Acute
nephritis, glomerulonephritis |
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White Liver |
It is used to describe a woman
with a very high sex drive. In often cases a woman of East Indian
decent is given this label as there is a myth that they have a high
sex drive. White-liver is a syndrome identified by an insatiable
sexual appetite.
White-liver is a syndrome
identified by an insatiable sexual appetite. It seems to be primarily
attributed to women, but can refer to a man. Randolph (1947) identifies
white-liver as meaning over-sexed. |
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Wine Disease |
Alcoholism, Wine Madness,
oinomania. |
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Winter Typhoid |
? |
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Winter Typhus |
? |
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Yellow Jacket |
This is another mistake copied
to almost every website with a list of causes of death. Yellow Jack
is the correct term. Yellow fever was a common cause for quarantining
ships and became known as yellow jack because quarantined ships
flew a yellow flag. A jack is another name for flag. |
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Yellow Janders |
Jaundice ? |
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