Medical Terms

This chapter is not an exhaustive or authoritative list of all diseases and obsolete medical terms. Further, the author is not a medical professional and the information contained within this chapter is not for medical use. This chapter is intended to help genealogists understand medical conditions, illnesses, etc. that affected our ancestors.

Click a letter to open that page of the dictionary:

B

bad blood

Syphilis

 

bilious fever

A term loosely applied to certain intestinal and malarial fevers. See Typhus.

 

black death

Bubonic Plague. The scourge of 15th century Europe. Could also mean Typhus.

 

black lung

Disease caused by breathing coal dust.

 

boil

An abscess of skin or painful inflammation of the skin or a hair follicle usually caused by a staphylococcal infection. Synonym: furuncle.

 

brain fever

See meningitis, typhus.

 

bright's disease

A disease of the kidney.

 

bronchial asthma

A disorder of breathing, characterized by spasm of the bronchial tubes of the lungs, wheezing, and difficulty in breathing air outward--often accompanied by coughing and a feeling of tightness in the chest.

 

bronco-pneumonia

Pneumonia involving many relatively small areas of lung tissue.

 

bubonic plague

A form of plague passed from the fleas on rats that causes swelling of the lymph nodes. Also called Black Death.