Death Records & Modern Medicine

It is both interesting and heartbreaking to browse (or find) death records.  So many causes of death are preventable in our day and age but would wipe out most of a family before modern medicine.  It just makes me wonder about the mother who lost THREE children from Scarlet Fever in less than a month, what she would have risked or given to have been able to prevent that tragedy.

1872 Michigan death record: King children age 9, 12 and  6

It is easy to blame vaccinations for this happening or that, but it really comes down to is poor Margaret King would have jumped at the chance to prevent this kind of tragedy or many others like it.  (Scarlet fever doesn't have a vaccination but is curable today.)  The type of disease that vaccinations due work against are NOT as severe as they once were because modern medicine is much better at treating the symptoms.  But we shouldn't loose sight of the tragic past we can find in the old records which show us just how deadly they once were.