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.

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S

septicemia

Blood poisoning.

 

scarlet fever

A contagious disease characterized by a red rash, sores and very high fever. The person's temperature can get so high naturally curly or kinky hair can be permanently straightened.

 

scarlatina

See: scarlet fever.

 

scurvy

A disease marked by spongy gums, loosening of the teeth, and a bleeding into the skin and mucous membranes and caused by a lack of ascorbic acid.

 

shingles

Viral disease with skin blisters. Related to Chicken Pox.

 

ship's fever

See: typhus.

 

sloes

See: milk sickness.

 

smallpox

A contagious disease that includes a high fever, chills or rigors, dorsal-lumbar pain, and nausea and vomiting. After 2 or 3 days a rash may appear over the entire body. These lesions form pustules and eventually dry out to scabs and fall off. Blindness, through corneal infection, is possible. One statistic indicates as much as 10% of the deaths from disease in the 18th century were from smallpox.

Smallpox is thought to have first appears 10,000 years BCE in agricultural settlements in Africa. The first recorded smallpox epidemic occurred in 1350 BC during the Egyptian-Hittite war.

 

spotted fever

Cerebrospinal meningitis fever.

 

St. Vitus Dance

See: chorea.

 

summer's complaint

See cholera infantum. In many cases this could have been food poisoning, from poorly handled or spoiled food.

 

stroke

See apoplexy.