life eh!
- Thread starter Sureitsoff?
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My paternal ancestry was ridden by very large families - up into the 'high teens' (albeit not all were even born alive). A fairly common practice seemed to be for my male ancestors to initially marry someone young, keep making her pregnant until one of the pregnancies killed her, then replace her with another young wife and go through the same process, and sometimes even onto a third !
I didn't realise this until I embarked on the exercise, but up until the very late 1800s, my ancestors were 'trapped' on the Isle of Wight (I presume none were strong enough swimmers to get to the mainland
), which, coupled with some extremely good parish records (and very helpful custodians thereof) on the island, made tracing the family back much easier than it otherwise could have been.Returning to what I said, very few of my male predecessors, or female ones who did not die of pregnancy-related causes, died between the ages of, say 15 and 65, with most getting to beyond 70.
Kind Regards, John
Maybe you would have understood better if I had written (without the erroneous 's' at the end of "Testament"!) ...
?
I suggest that you (and others) should read of the work of Ignaz Semmelweis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis). 1818 -1865
and
Historical mortality rates of puerperal fever - Wikipedia
Semmelweis "was a Hungarian physician and scientist, who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures.
Described as the "saviour of mothers", he discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") could be drastically reduced by requiring hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics.
Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal.
He proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives."
"Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community.
He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it."
It was not until Pasteur published his "Germ Theory" in 1878 (13 years after the death of Semmelweis) that the "mechanism" for the transference of puerperal fever became known.
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I saw no instances of that, at all. Tracing the paternal side proved to be fairly easy, not so the maternal side - I got completely stumped at three generations back.
There were a number of cases, of varying degree, in the paternal side of my family. The most extreme I can recall was one of my predecessors who brought about at least 15 or so pregnancies ('miscarriages' were poorly, if at all, documented, but sometimes mentioned in archive material), by no means all of which resulted in live births, and by no means all of the live births surviving to adolescence. That was from three wives, the first two of whom died as a result of pregnancies.
Exactly the same here. My mother's family name was Williams, and when, two or three generations back, I found myself looking at people in Wales (where it felt as if 'most people' were called Williams
), I essentially had to give up!Kind Regards, John
I can't say that I've ever read any of his works, but I'm very familiar with what you write.
I'm not sure whether you are correct in saying that Pasteur's 'Germ Theory' was published in 1878 but, closer to (my!) home, I think that it was in the mid-1860s that Joseph Lister (then in Glasgow, Scotland) introduced the concept of 'antiseptic surgery' (using carbolic acid), on the basis of having heard of Pasteur's 'Germ Theory'.
However, back in context, puerperal fever was but one of the many causes of the high rate of maternal deaths in the past. In those days, many women died of childbirth-related haemorrhage, or what we would now call 'eclampsia' (now very rare) or other causes. Still births were then very common, mainly due to limited obstetric knowledge/expertise (not that many pregnant women got anywhere near an obstetrician). The most dramatic factor (which most seriously impacts on the .mean life expectancy' figures) was the very high rate of perinatal, infant and child mortality, due in large part to infections.
[ As an aside, talking of Pasteur reminds me of the discussion above about about academic backgrounds vs. carrers/achievements. If I recall correctly, Pasteur was initially trained in Philosophy and Mathematics and then Physics (of which he became a professor) before turning to Chemistry - yet the incredibly world-changing thing for which he is 'known' is the prevention of infections ]
Kind Regards, John
Exactly the same here. My mother's family name was Williams, and when, two or three generations back, I found myself looking at people in Wales (where it felt as if 'most people' were called Williams
No such problem here, it was a very unusual surname, I just couldn't trace it further back - I simply hit a wall.
I thought he invented milk.
Yes, that's a problem that many people have. Once one gets back to prior to the start of formal registration of births, marriages and deaths (around 1840, if I recall correctly) one is primarily dependent upon parish records, which vary considerably in quality and availability (if any survive at all) between areas. As I said, I was fortunate with my paternal side because the family had been 'trapped' for countless generations on a small island with very good records.
My surname is not all that common in general but, presumably at least partially as a consequence of what I've described, is today fairly common in the Isle of Wight (and also southern Australia, but that's a different story!).
Kind Regards, John
I don't think you've got that quite right
Only its "Pasteurisation".
Whatever you are 'on', I might be interested in trying a bit of it
Unless it has changed since I was at school... Chadwick and later they added plastic to the foil to toughen it.
How the heck has a bit of info like that been retrieved from my head?
Off to google now to double check...
EDIT: Unbelievable that I remembered that and Chadwicks are still making foil lids https://chadwickslids.com/history/
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