1928 death from Acute Leucocythemia, what is

[burgerbern]

Help, have been searching online now for about an hour and cannot find a laymans description for what the cause of death was in 1928.

it is listed in full as 1(a) Acute Leucocythemia. No PM. certified by H, S Brook MRCS.

it is definately spelt as Leucocythemia (the death cert is very clearly written) and not as i have found some references Leucocyth [a] emia, wether both spellings mean the same thing i have no idea

The death of my wife's grandmother happened on or soon after the birth of my wife's mum in 1928 after she had been told that having another child could result in her death.

as far as i can find online it has something to do with the production of an excessive ammount of white blood cells but does not really give any idea of why death should have occurred and why childbirth could be a factor.

any help would be greatly appreciated

[carolchipp]

It's a type of leuchaemia - an Edinburgh pathologist, JH Bennet, discribed patients with enlarged spleen and changes in colour and consistency of their blood, and called it Leucocythemia (1848). One of the symptoms is that a lack of platelets causes easy bleeding with minor trauma so childbirth would probably carry an increased risk of haemorrhage. There's a detailed description on Wikipedia.

[susan-y]

Hi burgerbern...
Does this help? www.
biology-online.org/dictionary/Leucocythemia
Acute would be a very severe or perhaps localized in the body.
Sue

PS Carolchipp and I have great timing!!

[davyr]

It's very likely that this was in fact leukaemia, which used to go by the name of leucocythaemia. The spelling of both words without the "a" is usual U.S. practice, but U.K. medical practitioners use/used either or both interchangeably.

[burgerbern]

Thankyou all for the quick replies,

carolchipp, i had come across references to a book about the condition and childbirth by J H Bennet but could not find any references to the text anywhere and amazon did not have any second hand copies to have a readup. I can see now why it could have caused her death, i think i will keep the cause of death away from my wife's mum so as not to upset her as she has felt guilty about it all of her life and she is the last surviving child from the marriage

susan-y, that was indeed good timing both at the same instant, thanks for the link.

davyr, that was helpfull on the spellings and i did find a reference that stated that the condition is now called Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) which would tie in