Daily AncestorCyanosis
Cyanosis means blue skin from too little oxygen in the blood; for infants it usually pointed to a heart defect present from birth.
Cyanosis shows first on the lips, nail beds and ears. In newborns it was often caused by a heart that had formed wrongly, so that blood did not pick up enough oxygen, and such babies were called blue babies.
In older people cyanosis came with severe lung or heart failure. The entry describes a sign, not a single disease.
As seen in a recordCause of death column, 1850 to 1880 federal mortality schedule
Infant of Saml. Cole, 6 days, Cyanosis
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Daily Ancestor. "Cyanosis." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/causes-of-death/cyanosis. Last checked 2026-10-01.