Thanks to Medical Science

Giving thanks to medical science seems a strange topic, but I bring to you a death certificate for my Great-Grandmother, Lillian May (Saxton) Crosland. Unfortunately, prior to really being “into” genealogy I saw a newspaper article for Lillian that stated she was diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB). Furthermore, it stated that Lillian is the daughter of Bristol Police Chief Charles Saxton.

This was an interesting find … and apparently as rare as TB is today. I know it was in the Bristol Gazette, in the society page, but I’ll be darned if I can locate it now. Yet, I bring it up to you because as you can see if you have looked at the death record, Lillian died from Pulmonary Infarctions, presumably from TB. This left her children with no mother, and back then a single father wasn’t supposed to raise children, it was common for the father to remarry quickly, or to give his children to family members to raise.

Thornton B. Crosland gave his younger children (including my grandmother, Sarah B. (Crosland) Keckler) to other family members to raise. Although it is believed that Thornton may have paid some form of child support for Sarah.

Huh, I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent. Anyway, at this time we have many medicines, vaccinations, and other preventative measures to eradicate the population of many illnesses that long ago had taken lives of the young, the old, and the in-between. These illnesses were wiping out families, and spreading panic in the streets. Yet today, we are much more educated and protected from these sorts of illnesses.

And, for that I would like to thank medical science for preserving our present to increase the likelihood of a future.