Daily AncestorAsthma
Asthma on an old death record meant a disease of hard, wheezing breathing that came in attacks, as doctors then understood it.
The word comes from Greek for short or labored breath. Webster's 1913 describes recurring attacks of difficult breathing with wheezing, a tight chest and cough.
Webster's 1913 blamed a spasm of the airways, close to the modern view of narrowing airways. Asthma also had its own cause-of-death code in the IPUMS mortality schedule data.
As seen in a recordCause of death column, 1850 to 1880 federal mortality schedule
Rhoda Mills, 72, F, W, Jan., Asthma
Sources
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Daily Ancestor. "Asthma." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/causes-of-death/asthma. Last checked 2026-10-10.