Great-Grandpa died of what?

So you request great-granddaddy's death certificate and it arrives listing his cause of death as Ague. What the heck is that? Never heard of that but it sounds awful? He may not have suffered with something horrific or weird, it may be one of the many common illnesses today just known by another name in his day.

Sickness was a constant battle for pioneer families because they had no idea how people contracted diseases. The lack of clean water, proper food storage and preparation, and sanitation exacerbated the situation. Pioneer women were raised with basic knowledge of how to use herbs and plants to make poultices, teas, and other concoctions as remedies for a sick family member. Unfortunately, their knowledge was often no match for frontier illnesses. Doctors were scarce during the early days. With minimal education or training, their skills were very limited and they could only offer patients primitive and often unsuccessful treatments.

Epidemics could quickly spread from person to person and could wipe out an entire family or settlement in just a few days. Diseases which were known to be contagious and often fatal caused families or even entire communities to be quarantined until the threat of the spread of the illness passed. The four most prevalent illnesses early settlers had to endure were ague, cholera, smallpox and typhoid fever.

Ague, (pronounced "ag-yew"), also known as malaria, caused symptoms of body shaking and teeth chattering chills, followed by frighteningly high fever and terrible headaches, and profuse sweating until the fever broke. Entire families came down with the disease at once. The onset could last for only a hours or for extended periods and often reoccurred throughout the victim's lifetime. It was also referred to as chill fever, the shakes, and swamp fever.

Quinine, a bark extract used in the treatment of ague, was made in powder and pill form. It was hard to come by in early days leaving patients to suffer with no treatment. Pioneer doctors customarily thought that ague was caused by the air surrounding swampy ground or stagnant pools of water. The medical community eventually learned that ague or malaria was spread by the mosquito. Over time land modifications such as draining swamps, lowlands and marshes eventually caused ague to die out in the United States.

Cholera was one of the most dreaded illnesses for which there was no cure. The last major outbreak in the United States occurred in 1910-1911. Cholera was a severe bacterial infection transmitted by contaminated drinking water or infected food. It may have initially been brought to America with the arrival of immigrants on unclean crowded ships. Between one to five days of being exposed, a person could go from being healthy to dying in just a few hours. People suffering from cholera experienced profuse watery diarrhea, severe nausea and abdominal pain, vomiting, chills, thirst, and spasms. The severity of the symptoms lead to rapid dehydration and electrolyte loss causing death. Prevention of cholera is now known to be pretty simple and due to our advanced water treatment practices it is no longer a major health threat in the United States.

Smallpox is believed to have originated over 3,000 years ago in India or Egypt. It has been one of the most deadly and contagious diseases in history. Smallpox was spread through face-to-face contact with an infected person after a fever was present and affected people of all ages. It was spread by touching the skin lesions or wounds of an infected victim, or by encountering droplets of moisture from coughing or sneezing. It was also spread by touching the contaminated clothing, bedding, or other objects used by someone suffering with smallpox.

There were two forms of smallpox: (1) Variola major from which killed about 30% or more of infected people; and (2) Variola minor which was a milder infection with a death rate of less than 1%.

Smallpox is the only disease that has been completely eradicated throughout the world. The World Health Organization organized a massive effort in 1977 to eliminate all smallpox virus, except for samples saved for research purposes. In 1980, the WHO also transferred all remaining smallpox samples to the Centers for Disease Control labs in Atlanta, Georgia, and in Russia. With the demise of the disease, routine vaccination of the general public in the United States stopped after 1980. Vaccination of our military was discontinued in 1989.

Typhoid fever, also known as gastric, slow, or nervous fever, is a common illness that is only transmitted by ingesting food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. It does not affect animals and is only spread by human to human contact. Typhoid most often occurs in the hot months. Proper sanitation and hygiene, particularly when preparing food, are crucial to preventing a typhoid outbreak.

The incubation period is usually one to two weeks and patients are typically sick for about four to six weeks. Typhoid fever symptoms begin with poor appetite, headaches, generalized aches and pains, and then develop a slowly elevating high fever, profuse sweating, gastroenteritis causing terrible abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

Approximately 3-5% of the public can become an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, but are still able to infect others. The most famous carrier was Mary Mallon, widely known as "Typhoid Mary". She was a young cook who was deemed to be the first healthy person responsible for a typhoid epidemic. She unknowingly infected at least 53 people, three of whom died. Many carriers were placed in isolation wards against their will and were never released to prevent further typhoid outbreaks. Typhoid fever is not fatal today in most cases if promptly diagnosed and treated with antibiotics.


The following is a brief list of the common old time illnesses that I have run across in genealogical works, listed on death certificates, and mentioned in old newspapers or obituaries.

~American plague - yellow fever
~Apoplexy -paralysis due to stroke
~Atrophy - a partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body
~Bad Blood - syphilis
~Black death - bubonic plague
~Brain fever - meningitis or typhus
~Bright's disease - chronic inflammatory kidney disease
~Child bed fever - an infection in the mother following childbirth
~Chin cough - whooping cough
~Consumption - tuberculosis
~Cramp colic - appendicitis
~Dropsy - abnormal swelling of body parts due to excess water, more prominent in the lower legs and feet, often caused by kidney or heart disease
~Dry bellyache - lead poisoning
~Fainting fits - epilepsy
~Frogg - croup
~Grippe - influenza like symptoms
~Heart Sickness - heat stroke
~Infantile Paralysis - polio
~Jail fever - typhus
~Kink - fit of coughing or choking
~La grippe - influenza
~Lung Fever - pneumonia
~Lung Sickness - tuberculosis
~Mania - insanity
~Milk Fever or Sickness - from drinking milk from a cow that ate poisonous weeds
~Morbilli - measles
~Nervous Prostration - extreme exhaustion from inability to control physical and mental activities
~Palsy - paralysis or uncontrolled movement of controlled muscles
~Pertussis - whooping cough
~Puking Fever - milk sickness
~Quinsy - tonsillitis
~Rheumatism - joint pain
~Rubeola - German measles
~Screws - rheumatism
~Septicemia - blood poisoning
~Ship fever - typhus
~Stranger's fever - yellow fever
~Swamp sickness - Could be malaria, typhoid or encephalitis
~Teeth - death of an infant when teething
~Varicella - chickenpox
~White swelling - tuberculosis of the bone
~Winter fever - Pneumonia
~Womb fever - infection of the uterus