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i used to do medical transcribing. i had to read doctors chicken scratch all the time. that second one doesn't look like "no doctor" to me. but i can't figure out what it says. if it does say no doctor, then that's weird! because it does not look like that to me. seeing the whole document helps. good luck though!
I hate cursive for this very reason. Its too easy to screw up when someone has bad penmanship in the first place. I have several pieces of artwork where I cant even begin to tell what it says on it.
Somtimes you need to put it in the context of what the document is and the times of the period. "No doctor" would certainly sense on a death certificate from that time period. People died at home in their own beds without a doctor present.
Somtimes you need to put it in the context of what the document is and the times of the period. "No doctor" would certainly sense on a death certificate from that time period. People died at home in their own beds without a doctor present.
I agree - if there was no doctor present at the time of illness/death then there would be no way to make an accurate diagnosis on the cause of death (except with an autopsy but that would have been unlikely). Therefore on the death certificate, the cause of death would probably be recorded as something like "unknown, no doctor present" - or just "no doctor" as a shorter explanation. Alternatively, they could be saying the death was a result of no doctor being there to treat an unknown illness.
It definitely could be "no doctor" but without being able to see the full document and compare the letters against the rest of the handwriting on the document, it's difficult to say for sure.
i agree that you have to consider the whole document and type of document, etc. that still does not look like "doctor" to me. it probably is, but it sure looks like several extra letters written in there between the D and the tor.
From a strictly genealogy standpoint, I would be far more concerned with identifying an individual's name on a DC than anything else on the original document, except possibly the date or spouse's name.
If you have trouble deciphering poor writing, turn the page upside down.
Looking at it that way will help your eye find similar penstrokes in unknown letters to the known letters without your brain filling in the word.
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