What is cause of death "B F" for Lucinda Porter?

Question

In the 1850 mortality schedule, Lucinda Porter, (line 15) is listed with cause of death which appears as "B F". Any idea what that would have been? Some type of fever?

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6569-1FM?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AM3FJ-5NG&action=view

Answer 1

Hi Jamie. Bilious Fever seems likely. See "Old Medical Terminology" at Rootsweb:

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~nbsunbur/oldmedterm.htm

or archived:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230310012519/https://sites.rootsweb.com/~nbsunbur/oldmedterm.htm

Comments

Also mentioned here:

http://www.disease.pricklytree.co.uk/

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Bilious fever, from Wikipedia:

Bilious fever
Differential diagnosis	malaria, viral hepatitis

Bilious fever was a medical diagnosis of fever associated with excessive bile or bilirubin in the blood stream and tissues, causing jaundice (a yellow color in the skin or sclera of the eye). The most common cause was malaria. Viral hepatitis and bacterial infections of the blood stream (sepsis) may have caused a few of the deaths reported as bilious fever.

The term is obsolete and no longer used, but was used by medical practitioners in the 18th and 19th centuries for any fever that exhibited the symptom of nausea or vomiting in addition to an increase in internal body temperature and strong diarrhea, which were thought to arise from disorders of bile, the two types of which were two of the four humours of traditional Galenic medicine. It was often cited as a cause on death certificates. United States President Abraham Lincoln's son William Wallace Lincoln was said to have died from bilious fever. Modern diagnoses for the same symptoms would include a wide range of conditions and infections.

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Thanks George. To save people searching, the article is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilious_fever

The required link to the licence is CC-BY-SA 4.0

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"B.F." could also be interpreted as Black Fever, or Brain Fever (menengitis).

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Thank you for the star, Jamie. I agree that all three are possible. Rather than "B. F." having been used ambiguously, maybe one of them was commonly abbreviated, and the others normally spelt in full. But I don't see how we could determine which.