Daily AncestorChills and fever
Chills and fever was an everyday name for malaria, with its shaking chills and hot fever; the 1911 Census Bureau manual filed it under malaria.
The 1911 Census Bureau manual indexes chills and fever under malaria. IPUMS, coding the 1850 to 1880 mortality schedules, keeps a separate code for chills and chills and fever, apart from its malaria code.
The two systems disagree, so researchers counting malaria deaths in IPUMS data will not find chills and fever there. Read the phrase as probable malaria, the same disease older records call ague or fever and ague, but not as proof.
As seen in a recordCause of death column, 1850 to 1880 federal mortality schedule
Jesse Wimbish, 19, M, W, Sept., Chills and fever, 3 wks.
Sources
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Daily Ancestor. "Chills and fever." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/causes-of-death/chills-and-fever. Last checked 2026-10-12.