From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:
time for more Genealogy Fun!!!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) What is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors?
2) Tell us about the most unusual cause of death you found in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook status post. Please leave a link on this post if you write your own blog post.
Here's mine:
Out of the more than 33,000 people in my family tree, I have only entered cause of death for 442 of them! So right off, I see a huge hole in my tree I need to fill in!
My 442 causes of death are mostly mundane; just the usual Bright's Disease, heart attacks, infections, gunshot wounds, and automobile accidents. All sad, but not unusual. I could not think of or find any unusual causes of death among my direct ancestors, so I had to branch out to the entire tree. Who I managed to find is not even a direct relative - it's a cousin's wife - and the cause of death is similar to Randy's 2nd great-grandfather's!
Mildred Faye Hutton (1898-1942) was married to my 5th cousin, Charles Rex Ivie, in 1920 in Emmett, Gem County, Idaho. (Charles is my cousin on my maternal side, descended from the Hessers, who originally came from Germany.) Faye was 22 years old when she and Charles married. The little marriage announcement in the paper sounds as if they were very excited to get married:
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Published April 15, 1920 in the Emmett Index, Emmett, Idaho
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Alas, it appears that Faye and Charles divorced between 1930-1935. On the 1940 census, Faye is listed as a lodger and divorced in a new town. She was living in that same town in 1935, also according to the 1940 census.
She was only 43 years old when she passed away on June 22, 1942. According to her Idaho death certificate, Faye died of "Status Epilepticus due to Nerve Syphilis." The Status Epilepticus had come on in the last 48 hours before her death and was due to the "Neuro Syphilis" which she had for 2 years.
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Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1967 from Ancestry.com |
I googled this cause of death, and this is what I learned:
Status epilepticus is when someone has a seizure that lasts longer than 5 minutes, or if they have more than one seizure without returning to a normal level of consciousness between episodes. It can lead to permanent brain damage or death. Status epilepticus is very rare.
--https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/
Neurosyphilis is a bacterial infection of the brain or spinal cord. It usually occurs in people who have had untreated syphilis for many years.
Neurosyphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria. Neurosyphilis usually occurs about 10 to 20 years after a person is first infected with syphilis. Not everyone who has syphilis develops this complication.
There are four different forms of neurosyphilis:
Asymptomatic neurosyphilis occurs before symptomatic syphilis. Asymptomatic means there aren't any symptoms.
Symptoms usually affect the nervous system. Depending on the form of neurosyphilis, symptoms may include any of the following:
- Abnormal walk (gait), or unable to walk
- Numbness in the toes, feet, or legs
- Problems with thinking, such as confusion or poor concentration
- Mental problems, such as depression or irritability
- Headache, seizures, or stiff neck
- Loss of bladder control (incontinence)
- Tremors, or weakness
- Visual problems, even blindness
-- Medline Plus (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000703.htm)
Of course I do not know what Faye's symptoms were and thus how progressed her condition was. However, from my research, it appears the disease was advanced. Syphilis has been all but eradicated thanks to penicillin. Unfortunately it didn't come soon enough for Faye as penicillin was only first given in February 1941. While that was 16 months before her death, I imagine that her condition may have been so far advanced that it was too late for the medicine to help.
Note: It is important to consult a healthcare professional for an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment if you experience any of the symptoms listed above. All I know is what I read on the Internet. I purposely left the hyperlinks from the Medline website in case anyone wanted to view it themselves.
So while poor Faye is not a direct line ancestor, she is still a part of my family tree. I had never heard of this condition before. I learned quite a bit writing this blog post.
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