Daily AncestorMania
Mania on an old record meant violent madness or insanity with excitement, a common entry in asylum registers and sometimes on death records.
Webster's 1913 defines mania as violent derangement of mind, madness, insanity. It comes from Greek for rage, and Webster's lists it beside insanity, lunacy and alienation.
Mania could be followed by other words: mania a potu meant madness from drink, a name for delirium tremens, and puerperal mania came after childbirth. As a cause of death it names the illness, not the bodily cause.
As seen in a recordCause of death column, 1850 to 1880 federal mortality schedule
Peter Lutz, 33, M, W, Mania
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Daily Ancestor. "Mania." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/causes-of-death/mania. Last checked 2026-10-10.