I went in for an eye exam yesterday and got to discussing genetic diseases after he asked the usual questions about glocouma, etc. I mentioned that there was some interest in some people in the genealogy groups about tracing medical histories. He then told me that his father had died recently and they had done an autopsy in an attempt to find out why ALL his siblings had contracted an alzhimers (spelling??) like disease. All of them had contracted it between the ages of 74 and 76 and there is now some speculation that it may have come as the result of having been exposed to a flu when they were very young. Their mother and youngest sibling had died in "the epidemic" (I don't know which one.) Has anyone ever heard of anything like this before? And while we are on the subject, how does one go about getting medical records of ancestors? I have tried to get some information from my inlaws -- and it isn't easy. I have tried asking, begging, pleading, and I get bits and pieces. It reminds me of the old jokes about "no, nothing happened while you were gone...cept the dog died...got run over by the fire truck...trying to put out the fire in the barn...started by sparks from the house..." My husband has been having severe pain in his neck and shoulder. The doctor wanted to know if anything like this ran in the family. I called my father-in-law. He said, "No, to the best of my knowledge it doesn't run in the family. Except for the time I had the frozen shoulder. But that went away after some physical therapy. And my mother was in severe pain in her back for the last few years of her life, but I don't think that would have anything to do with it. And then Katherine (my husband's mother) did have a lot of trouble with stiffness in her back and some bone spurs, but that doesn't really sound like the same kind of problem he's having now. So, no, I guess it probably isn't genetic." Later in the discussion I mentioned talking to one of my great aunts and finding out that macular degeneration (spelling??) runs in one line of my family. This can lead to blindness in the forties in some members of the family. He said, "Yes, but sometimes it doesn't get too bad. I've had it for several years now and I can still see fine. Of course, my mother was almost totally blind and deaf when she died in her 80s. But they said it was glocouma. . . ." I started to wonder about making a chart like they use in Doctor's offices -- the kind I hate to fill out. But I wonder how successful I would be in getting information even with that. Any suggestions? Barbara Elizabeth Harris wrote: > > >I, too, lost relatives in 1917-8 Flu epidemic in NC. My grandmother and my > >uncle (age 19) died. It was a severe strain and they had very little > >medication. I may be wrong, but I believe that this strain was brought to > >the US by the returning GI's from WWI. > >> > >Good Searching - Good Finding - Good Luck! > >David Huffines > >Searching Hofheintz/Huffines/Huffhines/Hoffein/et.al. > >and Williamson, Wakefield, Underwood, Paisley, Sikes, Lipscomb > > When I'm not doing genealogy, sometimes I teach microbiology. Last spring > I did a freshman seminar called Microbial Disease and Human Society, which > covered everything from the Black Death to AIDS and a lot more, including > the 1918 flu. David's right, GIs returning from Europe played a > substantial role in spreading the flu throughout the U.S. and Canada. > Recent thinking however is that the epidemic actually began in the U.S., > not Spain as was originally supposed, was carried over to Europe by a few > troop ships, and then spread there before it returned to the U.S. in full > force. > > I turned up a couple of interesting web sites for my students that you > might enjoy also: > > http://www.webcom.com/~fuzzy/flu.html > > the story of Poker Alice in Deadwood SD; I actually learned about this one > through a genealogy connection! > > http://www.seattletimes.com/education/centennial/march/photo/flu.html > > a photograph of people in Seattle in 1918, wearing masks to protect against > flu exposure > > I also strongly recommend the following book: > > Collier, Richard, The Plague of the Spanish Lady: the Influenza Pandemic of > 1918-1919. Macmillan, 1974. > > This is very readable, and fascinating. > > Elizabeth Harris > chlamy@acpub.duke.edu