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!

Legacy 9.0! I'm in love!!!!

Legacy has release version 9 of its software!  I just learned about the update and I'm already in love.  There is a new search feature that searches the top genealogy websites as you enter your data into the database (I'm assuming you must be connected to the internet for this function to work).  Find a grave is now integrated into the legacy software!  Lots of ways to search, and better yet, to link to the online memorials for find a grave.  There is a story function now that allows you to add stories into your family tree (with source citations) and create that person's history.
The new comparison function allows you to compare two people to learn if they are the same person with built in algorithms to help identify similar and conflicting data.  Legacy has also added a cloud to back up your data on! Swoon!!!!!  Although I have several other clouds (OneDrive, Google), this is awesome!  I love that they can help me keep my precious research safe from the computer goblins who occasionally like to eat data!
There is so much to talk about and learn about!  Legacy has a free webinar that is 1 hour 43 minutes talking all about Legacy 9.0.

Happy Hunting!



Author's note: I am no compensated by the creators of the Legacy Family tree Software for creating this post.  This information is strictly from my own experiences with Legacy. 

Legacy...You did it again!

Author's note: I am not being compensated by legacy in any way for this posting.

Legacy, I have to say you did it again and you've blown me away with Legacy 8!  I bought Legacy 8 for myself for Christmas this year and I've had a couple weeks to work with it now.  I've also viewed the 'What's New in Legacy 8?' webinar from Legacy.
Before viewing the webinar I can say that the transition from Legacy 7.5 to Legacy was very easy for me.....everything is still in the same place.  The cosmetic look has changed, but I was still able to easily work within Legacy 8, in fact with some current research I have added close to 200 people to my files with the help of my dad's research (but that's another topic for another day).  All the previous legacy functions are still there, data is still entered the same way with many new features to gush about!
But....there are so many new tools that Geoff presented in the webinar which I'm going to talk about my favorites here!

My first new favorite is the origins report.  Using a person from your file you can see where the ancestors of that person came from.  A fun tool to see where you come from.  Here's an example of my origins report from my personal file!

 

The next feature I'm loving is the ability to print a label from your sources within your file!  Wow! What a great idea! I can see my self being saved a lot of hand writing in the future.  Another great addition to Legacy 8, speaking of sources, is the ability to add source citations to the pedigree charts. 

 

 

But wait...what was that they said in the beginning...shared events?!?....yes, share events!  Now it's so quick and easy to share events such as census information for all the members of the family!  No retyping the information for each member of the family!!!!

 

There are so many other features that Geoff talked about in the webinar.  Check it out on the Legacy website to see and learn much more!  I already loved Legacy over my previous software and now they've given me many more reasons to love them!

THANK YOU LEGACY!!!!!!!!!!!



Thank you Legacy for the Online Webinars

Since Legacy has launched their online webinars the list of topics just keeps growing and growing!  My favorite ones have been about breaking down brick walls....and we all have those!....and the ones on Irish genealogy.  I have gotten so many good ideas about where to research and what to research for.  Participating in these webinars have given me renewed motivation in my research. 

The webinars are recorded and all are available for a short time for free online after the webinar is broadcast, and some are available indefinately.  All the webinars are available on CD afterwards.  I have a few that are going to be on my Christmas list this year! 

I started a notebook on my genealogy education notes for the webinars so I have a fast reference for what I've learned.  I do make sure to write down any websites the are mentioned in the webinars so I have them for reference for later.  It's supposed to be a rainy weekend here so I'm snuggling up with my kiddos, my favorite warm drink and my laptop, maybe I'll even chip away at a couple brick walls while I'm at it. 

Happy Hunting!

Webinar

Today I'm participating in my first webinar from Legacy Family Tree.  Today's webinar is about the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner.  Included in the webinar today is a door prizes. according to their facebook post! How cool would that be!  I'm looking forward to learning more about my number one genealogy wish list item!!!!  In the meantime, while I wait. I'm signing up for a few more webinars offered by Legacy.  You too can check them out Here.  You can also check out previous webinars from their site and even buy copies of the webinars.  Another reason why I love Legacy. 

Happy Hunting!

Legacy 7.0 vs Family Tree Maker

Note: I am NOT being compensated by the makers of Family Tree Maker or Legacy for this entry. This is in response to a blogging prompt posted on facebook by the Genea-Bloggers group! The information contained here is base solely on my experiences using these software programs.

I admit that I am a converted Family Tree Maker user. Converted from Family Tree Maker that is. When I first started working on my family history it consisted of writing letters and waiting weeks to hear back from family members to returned filled out family group sheets. Which then would be typed up on my mother's electric type-writer. (That was big technology back then!) The internet hadn't even been invented yet! (And for all you who grew up with the internet, I'm not that old). We had computers, but they were the good old apple greenscreens. Being in my early teeens I had no source of income and we didn't have a computer for quite some time.

My very first exposure to Family Tree Maker was when I met my (now) Mother-in-law when my husband and I first started dating. She opened up my eyes to the world of Genealogy databases and.....Ancestry....! My Mother-in-law was an avid, long-time genealogist and she showed me all the wonderful things that Family Tree Maker could do. She popped a date disk in and I instantly started finding family members in my tree and was happily printing away sheets of information. Then I learned about Ancestry. Many hours was spent searching the pages that ancestry had to offer. That Christmas my husband bought me my first copy of Family Tree Maker. I think it was version 5.0 or 6.0. It was the delux version and it came wiith something like 20 data CD's as well and if that wasn't enough, it also came with a free 1-year subscription to Ancestry. Much to my parents' dismay, I'm sure. Every year for the 1st 3 or 4 years I faithfully bought the upgrades and got my free year to ancestry. Then I asked myself, why was I spending money every year to upgrade Family Tree Maker, and I quit buying the upgrades.

I continued to use Family Tree Maker until about two years ago. I had subscribed to Family Tree magazine and read an article about the top genealogy software databases and they were user tested by a panel of genealogists of varying expereince, all using the same dataset. Among the scores, Legacy recieved the highest overall ratings and Family Tree Maker came in somewhere in the bottom 2 (out of 4 or 5 programs tested). Legacy offers a free version of their software online, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. Withing a week I bought the full version and I haven't turned back since.

So, what's good and what isn't? With Family Tree maker, obviously I liked the free year to Ancestry, espcially when the price for the world version of Ancestry costs about $300/year, if you purchase the annual option, more if you go month by month. I also liked the data CDs that came with the program, but I could never seem to find information on my family lines. What I didn't like about Family Tree Maker first and foremost is they wanted me to contribute my research, the work that I have put literally hundereds of hours into to them so they could turn around and sell it and make a profit, while I got nothing out of it. After using Legacy, I find that Ancestry's sourcing function could be improved, I never knew what I needed to put into the source to properly cite my sources. I also got tired of buy the updated version every year for Family Tree Maker.

I know there are lots of Family Tree Maker fans out there and if that is the program you are happy with, then that is what you should use. After trying out another program, I just found that I like Legacy better and it works better for the type of researcher that I am.

So what about Legacy? Well I like that I was able to try out Legacy for free for starters, who doesn't like something for free? Of course several features were unavailable in the free version that I couldn't access until I bought the full version. I like Legacy's layout design and when I bought my copy of Legacy 6.0, 7.0 was so close to being released that I got the upgrade for free! Thank you Legacy! Legacy's sourcing function makes citing sources easy because it is all fill-in the box and then the program arranges the information in the proper order. Another feature I like about Legacy is companion programs! Legacy comes with a charting program that is fun to play with and make all kinds of fancy charts. There are also several programs fromt the makers of Legacy that interface with Legacy. Some of these programs work with Palm Pilots and Microsoft's Palm PC these programs supposedly interface with legacy, however I have never been able to get my version that I bought for my palm pilot to work, and honestly with my laptop the program lost its novelty after a couple months. Passage Express (PE) is another add-on program that interacts with Legacy. Although I have never bought the full version I have played around with the basic free version and it is pretty elaborate in what it can do. PE creates interactive CDs that you can make and share with your family. Think of it as a digital scrapbooking program that is designed towards genealogy. I actually thought that CDs made from this would make a great family reunion fund raiser! All these companions are great, but you have to pay for each program. The palm pilot and palm pc programs cost around $25 to $35, depending on which companion program you purchase. PE costs around $55.

Ok, so at one point I tried Roots Magic's free version and honestly I was happy enough with Legacy that I wasn't really interested in trying another Genealogy database. I do recommend trying out a couple databases, espcially if you can try them for free or borrow from a friend (remember to abide by software licensing laws) and try out different programs to find what works for you and what you like best. Also check out trade magazine for reviews of the database programs. They are a good source for not only the PC programs, but the Mac programs as well.

There are many good programs out there for genealogists and I think each has their pros and cons. It just depends on what kind of researcher you are and what you are looking for in a database program.