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Just got another death cert for a family member who died pre-1945....
Another death to pneumonia.
I knew antibiotics were important and lots of people died because they hadn't been invented yet.. but for some strange reason I'm always surprised when it's in MY family. That's three so far.
Just got another death cert for a family member who died pre-1945....
Another death to pneumonia.
I knew antibiotics were important and lots of people died because they hadn't been invented yet.. but for some strange reason I'm always surprised when it's in MY family. That's three so far.
Yeah. And add the ones who died from things we can prevent with vaccines, like measles.
Infectious diseases account for a lot of those small graves in old cemeteries.
For me, it is the death of the kids before age 2. There are 3 buried in a single plot from one nuclear family in my husband's line.
I get so very angry at the super crunchies who have never been exposed to these realities, and just swallow whatever garbage their other homebirthing upper middle class friends tell each other about how medicines are poison, and hygeine is solely responsible for the drastic drop in infant mortality. Then snidely tell people to "educate" themselves about using an OB or getting the MMR. But I do believe we are in for a reality check over the next decade or so, as superbugs proliferate, the antivaxers grow, and the lay midwife movement grows.
I have no proof, but I do believe it's a very real possibility my great grandmother died giving birth to my granduncle. And my sister very nearly died after the birth of my niece... in 1994. In a hospital.
So yeah -- I wouldn't like to give birth at home -- give me a hospital where I stand a chance of making it if something goes WAY wrong.
For me, it is the death of the kids before age 2. There are 3 buried in a single plot from one nuclear family in my husband's line.
I get so very angry at the super crunchies who have never been exposed to these realities, and just swallow whatever garbage their other homebirthing upper middle class friends tell each other about how medicines are poison, and hygeine is solely responsible for the drastic drop in infant mortality. Then snidely tell people to "educate" themselves about using an OB or getting the MMR. But I do believe we are in for a reality check over the next decade or so, as superbugs proliferate, the antivaxers grow, and the lay midwife movement grows.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Lots of young deaths.
That reminds me, I once had an argument with someone claiming that giving birth is "not a medical event" and doesn't require a doctor unless something goes wrong and that's why they chose to have a home birth with a doula. I tried to point out to them that it's only because of modern medical knowledge, procedures, and medicines that giving birth has become fairly routine and no longer a life or death situation. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (and probably earlier), childbirth was the NUMBER ONE leading cause of death among women of child bearing age and that's why you better believe I will be giving birth in a hospital with a freaking doctor. But oh no, it's not a "medical event" at all.
I have a three times great grandmother who died in 1833, nine days after her only child was born. She was 24 years old.
It is very possible her death was due to an infection. She died about 15 years before Semmelweis tried to get doctors attending women in childbirth to wash their hands and about 30 years before germ theory was postulated by Pasteur and Lister advocated antisepsis in surgery.
I had a great uncle who was an old country doctor in the early 20th century, and I acquired his medical library. My wife and I were both in the medical field and found the books interesting, especially the one on surgery since Wife's early years as an R.N. was a surgery scrub nurse. In the section in the book that was for nurse's, it advised them to change aprons between cases if they had time.
Pnemonia used to be called "the old man's friend." It ended many lives that had it not been there would have been from heart disease, cancer and a multitude of things that just couldn't be diagnosed back in those days. Congestive heart failure would probably been called pnemonia because the lungs would hve been full of fluid.
Lots of babies "died" because the head was too big to pass the mother's hip structure. I saw one old medical equipment catalogue that had ads for tools for dismenbering the baby's body so that it could be pulled out. A family plot next to my father's has a couple with seven babies that died within a few days of birth. I think the oldest was 6 months. Was there a blood problem? An RH factor?
Now, we live pass the time when a lot of us would be happy to call it quits. There's nothing worse than not being able to get around and do things. You can't drive. Stay out of the potty room for more than an hour, AND all your friends are either all ready dead or in a nursing home.
One of my great grandmothers died in the '30s of an ear infection.
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