Leier Family Chart
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Children of Charles
& Louise Nowasky
Children of Lawrence
& Amelia Leier
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CAUSES OF DEATH
born January 24, 1895 in Brooklyn - died September 12, 1919, age 24 years.
Father: Lawrence Leier (1862-1899)
Mother: Amelia Nowasky (1865-1931)
Spouse: Otto Fretz (1891-1974)
Cause of death: Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is a highly communicable and often deadly disease caused by the tubercle bacillus and characterized by toxic symptoms or allergic manifestations which primarily affect the lungs. Tuberculosis is spread through the air, when people who have the disease cough, sneeze or spit.
The typical symptoms of tuberculosis are a chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats and weight loss.
In the past, tuberculosis has been called consumption, because it seemed to consume people from within, with a bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting.
Before the Industrial Revolution, tuberculosis may sometimes have been regarded as vampirism. When one member of a family died from it, the other members that were infected would lose their health slowly. People believed that this was caused by the original victim draining the life from the other family members.
Furthermore, people who had TB exhibited symptoms similar to what people considered to be vampire traits. People with TB often have symptoms such as red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light), pale skin, extremely low body heat, a weak heart and coughing blood, suggesting the idea that the only way for the afflicted to replenish this loss of blood was by sucking blood.
In the 1800s, the disease was responsible for more than 30% of all deaths in Europe.
In the early 20th century, some believed TB to be caused by masturbation.
Even today, tuberculosis treatment is difficult and requires isolation in a clinic and long courses of multiple antibiotics. Unfortunately for Minnie and several other family members, antibiotics weren't developed until the 1940's.
When Minnie died in Brooklyn, her older sister Louisa was confined to a tuberculosis clinic in Glen Gardner, NJ, where she lingered for more than a year until her death in 1920 at the age of 35. Their brother Charles was 34 years old when he died from the disease in a clinic in Rhode Island in 1926. Teenaged sisters Bertha and Dorothy Kazalski died from TB in the early 1930's.
