Genealogy Chat

see below:

Hi, I have been looking on a website giving details of people who died in the early 1800's and SSoooo many of them 'Died from Teething'.. As many of you may know, I have a 16 month old Grand-daughter and she has this problem from time to time. - It just makes me want to cry when I read this and think of her.!! How lucky we are that certain things have changed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Even if she is already a 'dustaholic' !!) Dea x

Makes you want to weep doesnt it. My elder bro,.Mum & Dads firstborn, died in 1931 from pneumonia & bronchitus aged 3 months, Mum always said that as time went on he probably could have been saved with the modern treatment, I know it broke Mums heart to lose him altho they went on to have seven more!!.Dad never talked about the lad altho we were all brought up to know about baby Ronnie

My cousin died from TB in his early teens during the second World War, a few years before I was born. Ten years later and he'd almost certainly have lived.

I think it was fashionable (maybe that's the wrong word?) to lance the gums to aid the passage of the teeth in babies in the past. Now, if this were done without keeping everything clean, the chances of introducing infection might be high. Also what if the same person went about doing the same for many babies without using sterile methods? Maybe also if a child died from an unknown cause when the child was teething the death might be attributed to the discomfort felt by the baby.............. Merry

'teeth' was also given as cause of death in adults, so it wasn't just babies that suffered. At this juncture its hard to know what exactly was wrong and quite probably no one at the time knew either. Teething was probably a best guess. nell

Christine I suspect that laudanum also played a big part in deaths attributed to teething. Gregory's powders, which were sold for teething problems, contained opium well into the 1900s. OC