This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Killey Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/kFB.2ACI/1938.1.1 Message Board Post: Hi Kathleen, yeah--it's an interesting term, "coal miner epidemic," because no one I've contacted at the "old medical terminology" sites is familiar with it. I didn't know if it was tuberculosis, flu, or what. I just don't know what could make a body so contagious it could not be sent home for burial. From "MedicineNet.com" are some definitions for black lung disease: "a chronic occupational lung disease contracted by prolonged breathing of coal mine dust..a form of pneumoconiosis...has gone by many names incl. anthracosis, black lung, black spittle, coal worker's pneumoconiosis, miner's asthmas..." But I couldn't determine just how contagious it is, if it is. According to my relative, who wrote of the guy mentioned in my original posting, he was contagious and couldn't be sent to his home state for burial. But I don't know much about the serious illnesses to know what he had, exactly.