Sometimes in the course of your research you may find a cause of death listed on a death certificate and you have no idea what it means. Many names of illnesses have changed over the years. There's a good resource at Antiquus Morbus to help you interpret them. For example, Gastropathy, disease of the stomach; Dropsy, a collection of fluid or Tabes, a type of consumption or wasting of the body.
Louis Pasteur only discovered the "germ" in the 1850s. This was a decade and a half after the first settlers arrived on New Zealand's shores. It would have been some time before people truly understood the purpose of hand washing, sterilization, etc and adopted those practices fully.
It's fascinating that the area of Te Aro in Wellington was a marshy swamp before the 1856 earthquake raised the level of the land and allowed it to drain. Until then the area was a health hazard. A Maori Pa was located there and Maori and settlers co-existed (along with their horses, dogs and cattle.) Te Aro was notorious for it's high incidence of typhoid and dysentery and other communicable diseases because of its poor drainage and lack of clean drinking water. But it wasn't any initiative by local government that improved the lives of the residents, it was an "Act of God" which raised the land level, improving drainage and consequently the health of its occupants.
Maybe it's because I have had the flu for the last week, but I have been dwelling on how perilous life was in the early times for New Zealand settlers. Diseases that are unheard of now killed off people in thousands. Scarlet fever, typhoid, TB, and even measles were killers back then.
There was such a lot of illness in those days that it is surprising that so many survived. Perhaps they were tougher than we are today. It must have been incredibly heartbreaking for my great, great aunt Lilly Thompson's family as they watched their youngest and beloved sister die a horrible, painful death from appendicitis. It was 1892, and even in the civilised capital city of Wellington, nothing could be done to save the 20 year old's life.
I am thankful that I have grown up in the age of high tech surgery, effective pharmaceuticals and innoculations to protect children's health!
