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Someone stated on a mailing list that genealogies should include medical history?

I have some medical histories in mine. However, when we go so far back I am not sure of the significance. There was a time when people did not understand the pathology of bodily and mental illnesses and retardation. Most hereditary problems usually come up when both parents carry the gene with that problem. For instance two people who carry the epilectic gene have a better chance of having an epilectic child than an epilectic does. I understand you only worry about mental illnesses or mental retardation if you see a consistent pattern from a common ancestor. They knew nothing in times past about birth traumas and loss of oxygen to the brain during delivery. Diabetes. Today, we know more about it. Some are Type 1 and they are born with it and some are Type 2 and it is caused by lifestyle. I had a maternal grandfather that was probably diabetic and died in 1937 because I read a letter from my grandmother where he had sores that would not heal. My assumption is diabetes. Got some good answers. Now my question is things they didn't know about. When my grandfather was found dead in bed back in 1937, people knew very little about diabetes, but I feel he had it. Mental problems, only thing they knew is for some reason a person's behavior was something that was difficult to cope with. They really didn't know the pathology of it. I had an uncle that as a young man worked at the State Hospital in Austin, Texas. He was told not to say anything to any of the patients, that they would ask him questions and not to answer. They kept asking him questions, "What's your name? " Where are you from?" Finally, he told them his name was Lee and they jumped him and repeatedly asked him all sorts of questions over and over and a guard had to beat them off with big keys. You know, if a person wasn't totally mad when they went into place like that where no one would talk to them, they had to be after they were there for awhile. Now if someone suffered a severe head trauma and behaved strangely afterwards, they could figure out that it had to do with what happened to that person, but they really didn't understand why. I had a great grandmother that had a roof to cave in on her and she went blind and her mind wasn't right after that. A first cousin of my mother's told me she had a hole in her head big enough to put a silver dollar in it. Now, they could figure that sort of thing out. Therefore, though, when you might not always know by census record, Bible records, etc what might have happened to a person that could have effected them.

Public Comments

1. I think medical history will certainly be of interest to your descendants. And that's who you are creating this genealogy for.
2. Well I think you should document the Medical history of your family as far as you can with good documents. My fathers family has suffered from a odd form of depression and blockage of the blood vessels in the brain that I can document for 3 generations now when I found a old diary of my g,g grandfather's great Uncle this man spoke about his father and how at times he would be afflicted with terrible bouts of turmoil and as I further searched started to draw the conclusion that this may be the same symptoms that my father and my grandpa and my great grandpa suffered from so if this is true then that would be 5 generations. We now know that its Dementia early onset or a form of early alzheimers with underlying Clincal depression. In my Mothers family I have tried to the best of my ability to document the Genetic Heart Disease and Diabetes. I was actually told sometime ago that intermarrying can lead to many forms of Genetic Heart Disease and my mothers family has alot of intermarriage as does dads family. So I've rambled on here I think that documenting the Health of your family to the best of your ability is important in recording your family History. Great question Shirley.
3. Sure, when you know something of medical histories that's part of family history, same for diagnosed mental illnesses, suicides, the like.
4. Boy you have alot of good information on your family which is good so others will understand the problems some of them had. My father was in a bad m/c accident when I was a kid and had permanent brain damage from it. I document it so others will know it wasn't something he was born with but caused by the accident. My mother's side of the family has a history of diabetes, mostly in one of her gr-aunt's family so it's good to have that documented for others who might research this later. Cancer runs on her father's side of the family and her sister and cousin died of leukemia and an uncle died of cancer. I had polio as a child so I will include the history behind that since I got it the same year the vaccine came out. I want others to know what I went through and the struggles I had in my lifetime because I wasn't able to get the vaccine in time so maybe they will take the vaccine and try to prevent it in themselves or their children. My mother and father were both smokers and both died of cancer caused by their smoking. I want future generations to understand how dangerous it is, what their lives were like the last few months they lived and the pain their children had to go through as they watched them die from something that didn't have to happen that way. Medical history is important to people in different ways. If it is something that can be inherited, it's good for them to know about it to share with their family doctor. If it's a tragedy that fell on them and caused the problem, the family needs to understand what they went through to survive.
5. Hi Shirley, I think documenting whatever medical history you can find is very important. Granted, with new discoveries, illnesses of the past are now known by different names, but it is very important to document them. My great great grandmother lived to be 95 years old and her cause of death was listed as senility. I've never known senility to actually kill anyone, but today her diagnosis would have likely been Alzeimers Disease. So, yes having the documentation can show patterns. At the present time, I am researching the causes of death on my husbands side for clues to my sister in laws genetic illness. This past year she was diagnosed with a disease called Porphyria. Not many people know what Porphyria is but let just suffice it to say that it is not a single disease, but a group of at least eight different disorders that differ considerably from eachother. The symptoms arise mostly from effects on the nervous system or the skin. It is unlikely that I will find many death certificates that will likely give "porphyria" as a cause of death, but it is likely that I can find clues in the causes of death and the contributory causes as maybe symptoms of what is known as Porphyria today. It also helps to know the "history" of the illness as well. Many historians have speculated that King George III of England suffered from porphyria, namely variegate prophyria. According to notes made by the physicians attending him at that time, he suffered similar symptoms to those seen in an acute attack of porphyria; abdominal pain, constipation, rashes, confusion and severe weakness in his limbs. They also mentioned that he had dark reddish urine during these sieges and that he was often "mad." The royal physicians were not permitted to conduct extensive physical examinations, so they had to greatly depend on what King George told them about his condition. Knowing that Porphyria seems to have a history in people from England coupled with my sister in laws genetic testing which isolated my mother in law as a carrier of the "gene" has allowed me to build a roadmap of my sister in laws illness. I have now located a family five generations back where almost ALL of the members had symptoms of porphyria. Does the documentation on them say Porphyria? No, but given that all of them complained of symptoms that are now "classic" signs of Porphyria, I feel that I have found the line responsible for my sister in laws illness. My mother in law carries the gene, but is not affected by active Porphyria. Her father had to have been a carrier too, but I have found no indications that his gene was active either. So, with that, I believe that documenting any medical history, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time can be very important for future research.