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Agnieszka Budziałowska, Magdalena Górna
What did the inhabitants of Poznań die of?
The analysis of death causes in environmentally
and culturally diversified districts of Poznań
Abstract
In the 19 century, Poznań was an overpopulated and municipally-wise neglected city.
Additionally, the fortifications surrounding Poznań blocked its spatial development. Behind
the city walls, population was much lower than in the downtown area. However, poverty and
limited access to healthcare were the real problems. The aim of the article is to demonstrate se
lected causes of death in selected Poznan districts and the role of environmental and cultur
al factors in this subject. Data on death cases are derived from the church registers in 4 Roman
Catholic parishes: St. Martin’s, St. Roch’s, St. Mary Magdalene’s and St. Margaret’s. These reg
isters are deposited in the National Archive in Poznan. For the abovementioned parishes, death
causes were presented in percentage values and categorized in four age groups: children up to
one moth, children between 2 months and 1 year, children between 2 and 14 years and people
over 50 years old. Differences that appear when it comes to the number of death causes among
the parishes were verified with the u test.
In the 19th century, in Poznań the most common mortality regulator were infectious diseas
es. The largest number of deaths caused by scarlet flu, pertussis, smallpox, measles and the socalled “rashes” (almost 12%) was registered in a poor St.Margaret’s parish. The cholera death
toll was the smallest in the suburban St. Roch’s parish – only 2% of deaths were caused by it. In
St. Roch’s and St. Martin’s parishes, neurological diseases were responsible for 13.6% and 25.7%
of all the deaths respectively. The most common death cause in St. Roch’s parish was weakness –
weakness-related mortality reached 23% of all deaths. All the other parishes had much lower
mortality rate related to neurological diseases (from almost 4% to 7.5%). Number of tuberculo
sis-related deaths also differed among the parishes. The highest mortality was observed in the
downtown parish (St. Mary Magdalene’s) and in St. Margaret’s and St. Martin’s. The lowest – in
St. Roch’s. However, St. Roch’s had a high mortality rate caused by the so-called fevers.
Environmental and cultural factors, e. g. poor medical knowledge and therefore bad identi
fication and diagnosis, influenced the fact that people from the downtown area and people from
the suburbs died from different reasons and at different times.
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