Annotation 1
Alfred’s wife, Mary Davis, died on November 2, 1863 of “consumption of the lungs.”
Five days after her husband reported for the U.S. Navy, Mary Davis died, leaving little Frank’s future undetermined. Sick since July, Emilie’s sister-in-law Mary died of “consumption of lungs,” according to her death certificate, on November 2. Described as a general “wasting or consumption of tissue,” most often causing the infected to cough up blood and mucus.
Webster’s New International Dictionary, Reference History Edition (Springfield, MA: G&C Merriam Company, 1910). According to Dr. George B. Woods, writing in 1858, tuberculosis was often caused by “insufficient food, confinement, want of fresh air and exercise, habitual exposure to cold, sensual excesses, great loss of blood or other depletion.” Woods noted that in colder climates, tuberculosis affected the young, between four and thirteen years, and the elderly, and he remarked that “[n]egroes are, in this climate, more disposed to the disease than the whites.” George B. Wood, M.D.,
Treatise on the Practice of Medicine, Part II, 5th ed. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott And Co., 1858, 115-119.
