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CAUSES OF DEATH

LOUISA LEIER LANZARO
born September 2, 1884 in South Greenfield - died July 16, 1920, age 35 years.

Father: Lawrence Leier (1862-1899)
Mother: Amelia Nowasky (1865-1931)
Spouse: Ciro Eugene Lanzaro (1881-1944)

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 Louisa and several other family members, antibiotics weren't developed until the 1940's.

Louisa contracted tuberculosis in 1919 and was confined to a sanitarium in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, where she died more than a year later on July 16, 1920. She was 35 years old. She is buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Keyport, NJ, along with her husband Ciro and their last 3 children who died as infants.

For more information about Louisa, click on "Louisa & Ciro" and "Louisa's Letters" in the panel on the left.

Shortly after Louisa entered the clinic in 1919, her younger sister Minnie died in Brooklyn of the same disease. She was only 24. 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.

LEIER/NOWASKY FAMILY WEBPAGE