Friday, January 15, 2010

St. Vitus Dance, say what?

A special article to the Ashville (North Carolina) Citizen-Times, "You may have had 'quinsy' and not even known it," discusses a variety of outdated medical terms. The article explores milk sickness, camp fever, and St. Vitus Dance, among others. Aside from being informational and sometimes entertaining, knowledge of these more archaic terms can help researchers when they come upon unfamiliar terminology in family lore or on death certificates. Unfortunately, the articles on this site are available for a limited time. This particular article is a continuation of the December 7 article that has since been archived and requires a small fee for access ("If your g-grandma died of apoplexy what really killed her"), So if you are interested, you might want to use the "Print this page" link on the site and save this article for future reference. Of course, many lists of archaic medical terms --without the commentary -- are available on the Web, a good list can be found on the Genealogy Quest website.

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