Old Medical Terms

I was reading Facebook this morning and a friend was sharing a discovery walking through a couple local cemeteries.  Through this, he went to one of my favorite research sites Seeking Michigan (www.seekingmichigan.org) and found an old death certificate.  The cause of death was "generalized paralysis of the insane".  Of course, then there was a conversation about the cause of death.  I have to confess that I love old medical terms.  Perhaps part of this is being a nurse as my profession.  This also started me to think about how much medical knowledge genealogists probably have...or maybe I'm assuming.

In my research, I include the cause of death, which is found on death certificates and is written in that era's current medical lingo.  The nice feature here is that my Legacy program actually has a built-in line for this.  (I know I'm obsessed with my Legacy software).

 

Here I show Anna Helferich, nee Zoulek died from Chronic Bright's Disease.  This takes me back to my initial topic here of old medical terms.  Bright's disease is not something I am familiar with so I went to Google and typed in Bright's disease.  I found a website (not Wikipedia) that is defined Bright's disease for me, plus gave me a little history.  When I include medical information on my research I frequently will add a little note in my research notes about what this really is.

Anna died from nephritis, which is inflammation of the kidney at it's simplest definition.  I also learned that this disorder that I know as nephritis, was originally identified by a physician named Bright, so that's where the original name came from.   For those that don't know, Chronic just means that she had it for a long time, longer than six months generally rather than acute, when usually means suddenly or less than six months.  Those are terms we still use.

I also still have my Taber's Dictionary that I had to buy when I took my first nursing classes and even though it's probably not the current edition, it is still full of useful information.  Although I admit, Google is much faster.  I did take a moment to look up Bright's Disease in my Taber's.  Bright's is named for the Brittish Physician, Dr. Richard Bright (1789-1858) who named the disease.  Taber's dose state that Bright's is an obsolete term.  That made me giggle a bit.  It's obsolete, but when you're a genealogist that doesn't matter.

So what about our original term generalized paralysis of the insane.  This time I'm going to start with my Taber's. So no luck in Taber's.  So my next stop is Google.  I found an article on Science Direct.  Generalized Paralysis of the Insane, GIP for short, also called Dementia Paralytica is a fatal complication of Syphilis Infection.  Apparently hard to detect because Syphilis has a latent period of 10 to 30 years! (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924933815309809).

So what are your thoughts about old medical terms?  Love them? Hate them? Indifferent?  Share below.  And watch for more posts on this topic.

Happy Hunting all!