The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) has a regular publication called American Ancestors. I subscribed for awhile, but no longer do because so few of my ancestors lived in New England. However, I still have many of the magazines I received as a subscriber. The Summer 2021 edition of American Ancestors (vol. 22, no. 2) was focused on health, using the theme title Health & Our Ancestors. The website states, “You can access and download all past issues of American Ancestors magazine from 2010 to present with your American Ancestors/NEHGS membership.” Membership options are explained here. The “guest” membership only allows you free access to much older issues.
The first article in this issue (vol. 22, no. 2), “Jeremiah Barker & Diseases in the District of Maine, 1772 to 1820,” discusses the discovery of several boxes of manuscripts (1771-1818) that Jeremiah Barker had planned to publish. The article was written by Richard Kahn, a retired physician in Maine. Obviously, I cannot share the article here. The article is six pages long and well documented. However, Dr. Kahn has compiled this research into a book that you can purchase from Amazon or other booksellers. It is available in hardcover or on Kindle. Look for Diseases in the District of Maine 1772-1820: The Unpublished Work of Jeremiah Barker, a Rural Physician in New England. Amazon makes available a nice preview of the book.
The second article in this volume of American Ancestors (Summer 2021) is called “Adding a Medical Genogram to Your Genealogy Toolkit”. It touts the benefits of creating a graphic organizer to chart the diseases of your ancestors and explains how to do it. Many resources are suggested to help you get started. The article is written by Ann Lawthers, a genealogist at American Ancestors/NEHGS. The article is five pages long and provides ample documentation. The following are suggested as helpful resources:
CDC Family Health History (But it appears this page no longer exists at hhs.gov/familyhistory. If you trust the CDC, you can try this link instead.)
Genetic Alliance (geneticalliance.org)
National Society of Genetic Counselors (nsgc.org)
Lawther’s article includes a helpful table called “Archaic Medical Terms”, which I will include below and on our private Facebook page.
Another article in this issue is called “The International Classification of Diseases for Genealogists” by Hallie J. Borstel, a genealogist at American Ancestors/NEHGS. This explains how to use the codes found on many death certificates. Additional links were provided, but they no longer work. You may want to do further study on the ICD if you are unable to access the article by Borstel with a NEHGS membership. I did find a related article here, using my own search terms.
The articles mentioned in this newsletter are very academic, so if you enjoy that, try to obtain copies from NEHGS. I am pretty sure the “Table of Archaic Medical Terms” will be helpful to me, which, as I mentioned, will be posted on the Facebook page, as well as below.