- A reason to do genealogy and seek out your family history:
- Start sending for death certificates.
- Dig about in the attics and basements for clues about meds your family member took.
- Investigate stories that might include information about the ancestors' health, especially pension applications...or whatever you can find.
- And for Pete's (or whoever's) sake, talk to living relatives, especially older living relatives...even if they are distant relatives.
- Find county histories and speak to old-timers in the are where your relatives lived. Review newspapers and photographs. Learn the signs (physical signs) of genetic diseases and consult medical dictionaries if you have questions.
- Recently I was working on an indexing project which dealt with field hospitals and in this case, a particular hospital that treated the diseases and sicknesses of both local folks and the soldiers coming out of the 1865 civil war fighting. Names, ages, and the disease or cause of their being at the medical facility were recorded. This source was not specially tied to genetic disease, but reminded me that our ancestors suffered in a time that the existence of antiseptics had not yet made an appearance. There was no such thing as a deterrent or cure for typhoid. We are linked to those ancestral experiences if only through DNA. Let science and technology become a part of your family history, now.
