I’d intended to post this list earlier in the week for the Top Ten Tuesday freebie, but couldn’t remember the name of the book I was using, Alabama Mortality Schedule (1850, Seventh Census of the United States). I stumbled on this years ago and was immediately mystified (and sometimes amused) by the listed causes of death. As you might expect, there are a lot of diseases that are now treatable, and a great many causes of death that were unique to a more rustic age — falling from horses, being crushed in a cotton gin, and “entangled in plow gears” (yikes!). Amid the whooping cough and drownings, though, there are some causes of death that are….unusual.
Selma, Alabama
(1) “St. Anthony’s Fire”. That sounds like an epic way to die, but it appears to be poisoning via wheat infected by fungi.
(2) “Milk Leg Fever“, which is the strangest way to describe a blood clot I can imagine.
(3) “Teething“. Teething? According to the University of Leeds, it was common in The Olden Days for people to attribute deaths by fever or such while a toddler was teething to the teething process itself. Oral health was serious back then: Red Gum, or gingivitis, is also listed as a cause of death. See? Flossing is important.
(4). “St. Vitus Dance“. A vernacular name for “Sydenham’s chorea”, an inflammatory response to strep. So named because its symptoms included bodily jerking, and people prayed for relief to St. Vitus, the patron saint of dancers. Must have been an old traditional name, since Alabama has never had a huge Catholic population.
(5) “Gunard Deply”. If you’ve ever done genealogical or historical research prior to the 19th century and dealt with handwritten sources, or typed transcriptions of handwritten source texts, you may appreciate the…er, creative variety of how names, etc were taken down by census takers and the like. “Diabeetus”, “New Monia”, and “Dysenterry” all appear in this book, for instance, indicating that Wilford Brimley may have been older than we knew. There’s no telling what Gunard Deply is, but ChatGPT guessed that it might’ve meant “General Debility”. If you think that’s too vague for an official Cause of Death, please know that this book also includes “Old Age”, “Complications”, and “Liquor” as causes.
(6) “Dirt Eater”. It is a ….thing…that some southerners, black and white, eat white clay. I’ve even seen bags of white dirt being sold in gas stations. One journalist who investigated this described the taste as “fresh rain on a hot day”. Evidently some people have a taste for it, just as some people can’t eat cilantro because it tastes like soap. (I am not one of these people, thanks be to God.) Strikingly, this is not a one off, but appears every so often. It’s a bit sad to have an insult hurled at one’s corpse as the official cause of death.
(7) “Complications”. Yeah, we’ve all had that that kind of weekend. Also see “Intemperance”. I’d possibly add “Mortification”, which often follows intemperance and its complications, but evidently in the 19th century that referred to necrosis or gangrene. (Relatedly: “Gravel” referred not to being stoned to death, but to kidney stones and related issues.)
(8) “Gen’l Derangement”. I’m sure there’s a story behind this one, as with “Spinster”.
(9) “Worms”. I’m guessing we’re talking tapeworms and hookworms, not Tremors type worms. According to the University of Arkansas, parents who believed their children had intestinal worms sometimes accidentally poisoned them with snake oil products — not the only case of someone dying of the cure. One strange entry in the book, “corrosive sublimate”, proved to be mercury poisoning as a treatment for syphilis.
(10) “The King’s Evil”. Tuberculosis in the lymph nodes! Back then TB was referred to as “consumption”, a handy fact if you ever want to impress a Civil War reenactor.
Check out more strange deadly diseases over at CSI: Dixie’s “Graveyard of Old Diseases“! You can also check out mortality schedules for yourself over at Ancestry, and read about the background of their creation here.
While some of these names are amusing, and digging into what they meant proved to be both fun and stimulating, it was a stark reminder of how dangerous a place the 19th century frontier could be. There were sad stories I could glean from the data here, like an entire family who drowned together, or the constant spectre of infant mortality. Even so, there was humor to be found — from the absurd causes listed for some, to the census takers’ glimpses of humanity as they wrote in question marks behind listed causes they couldn’t understand.
Related:
Top Ten Things You Won’t Find in Today’s Local Newspapers. A list of historical papers’ features that are nowhere to be found today.
Reading Freely 
One reason why I’m a FIRM believer in the idea that the best time to live is *always* now!
Dirt eater??? And King’s Evil? The names make the disease sound absolutely horrifying!
The King’s Evil was so called because supposedly only the king’s touch could cure it, oddly.
Ah, a superstition. That makes sense.
Oh no, I’m dun fer Clem, I dun got the Diabeetus! Just promise you’ll bury me proper and tell Mama I died like a man…
“Mrs. Bookstooge, we regret to tell ya that your son…well, he’s done passed on. We was trying to tip a cow and there was….complications right after the steer noticed us. An’ it only got worse after the RANCHER noticed us.”
Hahahaha! Well played sir, well played 🙂
I’ve never heard of clay-eating in the South before, but that’s really fascinating. Such practices probably originated out of necessity but stuck around as a tradition. Or maybe it tastes better than it sounds (I do like rain, but…)
When I looked into it, there was some initial speculation that it came to the Americas with slaves, buut some early European accounts indicate it was an established native practice in some cultures. Evidently it has worldwide currency. Wikipedia speculated that it might be a way to get vitamin B12.
I’ve definitely heard the clay/dirt eating thing — one of my grandmother’s relatives (north Florida) would go and get dirt from the ditches to eat. That was black sandy dirt, not even good clay. The theory is that it’s a mineral deficiency of some sort, but how bad/what that leads one to eat dirt … Interestingly, this is also featured in an episode of Emergency! – a patient from Mississippi (? somewhere Deep South) has ended up in Doc Brackett’s LA emergency room pregnant and suffering complications from malnutrition and clay eating.
I used to transcribe handwritten genelogical records for digital searches. Some of the information I came across broke my heart. It got to the point where I was focusing on things others than death records. I did a lot of military draft cards, a handful of immigration paperwork (was really eye opening how many people really changed their names when moving to North America), and even some marriage records. The census records have always been interesting to read though.
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
I’m a genealogist, so I’ve read through a lot of census records, mortality schedules, death records, etc. They’re fascinating, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious. I’ve definitely come across “teething” as a COD as well as “general debility.” As for “dirt eater,” that is a new one for me. Ick.
I’ve puzzled over many a census taker’s terrible handwriting and interpretation (or misinterpretation) of information, but AI transcriptions also make for some funnies. I came across a census that listed a man’s occupation as “armed farmer.” Yikes! When I looked at the actual document, it said, “armed forces.” That made a lot more sense. Ha ha.
Thanks for posting this and letting me know you did. Very interesting and entertaining.
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
Armed farmer! Those are the pioneers we can be proud of, heheh.
I had to do a transcription once of my city’s original charter, at the behest of the mayor. I REALLY struggled with the longhand, even though I’ve re-taught myself to write in cursive as an adult. Fortunately one history of the town quotes from the charater AT LENGTH that the author provided me a rosetta’s stone of sorts. Comparing the script passages with the plaintext helped me identify not only some of the unusual lettering, but the abbreviations and almost code-words they used.
Great post, very interesting.
Thank you!
I feel so bad for all of the suffering people experienced in the past. These illnesses sound awful.
(Thank you for sharing this post with me!)