TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2002-10 > 1034271591


From: Joe Cummings <>
Subject: [TMG] Cause of death
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 10:39:58 -0700 (PDT)


This subject I think leads into a much broader consideration.

First I need to explain where I am coming from. I consider that there are three successive "levels" of Genealogy research. The basic one is to develop the "skeleton" of the people being researched (names, birth, death and relationships). Second is to put "meat" on the skeleton. Information such as anecdotes, marriage, education, occupation, etc. turning the individuals into a "living" persons. This is the usual goal for researchers and output reports make very interesting reading to their progeny. But remember that this level of information relates to past events. With minor exceptions, future generations have no idea as to how these ancestors have or will affect their lives. This is the third level, to convey to the proginy how these ancestors may influence their life or another way of saying it is, what have I (the progeny) inherited? This need was the primary reason I got interested in Genealogy. I think it is the most important information we can pass on to future gener!
ations. To accomplish this, it is necessary to include in the database items; such as, medical (physical and mental), physical attributes, dental and so on. I know of no software that handles this aspect of research. TMG comes closest and that is why, after 15 years I have settled on this software. I think it at least has the potential for me to enter the level 3 data into my database. There are; however, no reports that that I am aware of to support this level. There are some programs out there written specifically to support genealogy research into inherited data (e.g., ancestor charts showing both sides of a family illustrating medical information and statistical reports on the number of people having certain diseases or maladies). I may be off base insofar as saying this cannot be done with TMG since I am a new user of this software. My basic problem at this point is to find some way to enter the data so in the future I can generate the appropriate reports. Do I put the !
data into the memo field, the sentence structure, place fields, etc.? Anway, that is enough, let me get to the specific question of "death cause handling".

I started by building a custom flag for cause of death. It is a general "cause"; for example, accident, cancer, pulmonary, vascular, old age, etc. One problem is that the cause of death as listed on a death certificate may have no bearing on what may be inherited. Now I don't mean that is not useful information. Let me give an example. Some poor soul had a bad heart for many years. Then developed terminal cancer. Dies of Pneumonia due to complications of the other two diseases. The cause of death on the certificate will be Pneumonia and will undoubtedly list cancer and heart as contributing factors. Now I am no medical expert but I do not think Pneumonia is an inherited trait. The progeny is definitly interested in the cancer and heart problem. All I am trying to say here is that from the future generation standpoint there is interest beyond the direct cause of death. It is important we think through how the "level 3" information can be documented to produce the desired repo!
rts.

My current thought is to have several custom tags. One "Medical-serious problems" which would summarize serious health problems listing what they were, date and age detected, mitigating factors and corrective actions. Another tag Medical-maladies. This would summarize problems that are not life-threatening; for example, arthritis, allergies and so on. Again including date and age detected and affect on the individual. A Medical-physical tag would describe physical attributes of the person during their life. I currently place in the Memo field of the birth tag details on how the birthdate meshed with the earlier projected birthdate and what was done in the hospital while the baby was there. I am not saying this is the way to document the data and maybe this presentation will elicit dialog to address this whole "level 3" data store and report need and not just do it piecemeal. My concern with this approach is that all the vital information is in the Memo of the Tag. I am not s!
ure the Memo words can be extracted to generate the desired reports (V5.03 or beyond).

Joe



---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos, & more
faith.yahoo.com

This thread: