Cause of death - abortion or miscarriage?

[Melberry]

I have just received my great, great grandmother's death certificate from 1906 which states the cause of death as:
"abortion (4 months)
septiceamia
exhaustion"

Was abortion another word for miscarriage back in those days? Could she have miscarried at 4 months and developed an infection?

TIA
Suzanne

[Marie C..]

Abortion was a medical term for early miscarriage so it could be that she had a miscarriage for one reason or another(natural or otherwise) and sepsis resulted. And yes! sepsis can develop from lack of cleanliness , infection or whatever.
Marie

[ChristineR]

If she was a married woman, then one would not expect her to deliberately abort a child, especially at 4 months. It would have helped if the doctor had said spontaneous abortion.

[Marie C..]

That's it Christine... spontaneous abortion.... couldn't think of the word in time so wrote natural instead. Also the septicaemia could have been caused by the abortion being "incomplete"(a bit left behind.)
Marie

[vic1]

EVen today they call a early miscarriage a spontaneous abortion. and yes infection can set in especially if the womb did not expell everything and even if it did it could be that infection was the cause of the abortion and it simply got an even better grip afterwards. even with todays cleanliness antibiotics are sometimes prescribed . they actually call a planned abortion a non spontaneous abortion.sigh why can't they use miscarriage for unplaned and abortion for planned i don't know . to try to confuse us lay people i suppose azny way am getting a bit melancholy typing this but hope it helps you.
vic

[Melberry]

Thank you all. I suspected as such. It is awful to think what my great grandmother must have gone through. And she was only 31.
Thanks once again
Suzanne

[mandaloon]

your post also mentions " Exhaustion" this may well have been due to blood loss, which sadly was a common problem then and a cause of many deaths in childbirth as well as miscarriage. Not much comfort but would have been quick and painless.

[NickM]

How long after the miscarriage did she die ? Is this known ?

If it was about a week, she could have died of puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever), which was a bacterial infection. It killed my grandmother after she gave birth to twins, but the twins survived. It still kills women today, despite antibiotics and cleaner hospitals.

[Marie C..]

Cleaner hospitals?????
I had puerperal fever and septicaemia in 1970 and was a month in hospital.( Here by the grace of God and Leonard Waksman who discovered streptomycin.)
Puerperal fever still kills because the severity of the illness is not realised and carelessness in recording temperature post-natally is lax in some places. Also it isn't recognised until it has taken a hold.
Referring back to your relative she may well have developed septicaemia rather than puerperal fever. It would be impossible to say for sure unless there was a post mortem.
She also had exhaustion. The body had no resources with which to fight overwhelming infection.

[ChristineR]

......
Referring back to your relative she may well have developed septicaemia rather than puerperal fever. It would be impossible to say for sure unless there was a post mortem.
She also had exhaustion. The body had no resources with which to fight overwhelming infection.

The death certificate does say septicaemia according to the opening post.

[Lesley Robertson]

Abortion was a medical term for early miscarriage so it could be that she had a miscarriage for one reason or another(natural or otherwise) and sepsis resulted. And yes! sepsis can develop from lack of cleanliness , infection or whatever.
Marie


Disinfection only really became commonly used in the late 1800s, and was primitive right up to WW1.

Lesley

[Melberry]

Alas, there is no one we can ask to find out when she had the miscarriage. It occurred in London.
Thanks for the discussion.
Suzanne