Brain Congestion!

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In researching our family genealogy I happened on a death index from 1860, and possibly one key to my in-law's fears.

In 1860 only 3 people died in King County, one of them some sort of great aunt of ours, apparently. She died from "Congestion of the Brain." This explains so many things to me about some of my in-laws. "Auntie died of brain congestion--we have to be soooo careful not to fall into that trap! Burn the library card! See what can happen if your brain gets too full? Look at Auntie Emily!"

When my husband and I were dating, my FIL and MIL were completely floored by my attraction to books and writing. It was unnatural! A waste of life! Of course, we're talking about people that believed the stuff in the National Enquirer. "They wouldn't let them print lies!" Dramas for TV were taken as gospel, with no allowance for artistic license. Book larnin' was only good for a few things. You're much better off learning from experience, said FIL. I figured I wasn't about to waste the interesting part of my life learning the hard way things that people already knew (other than recreationally, of course, especially involving beer) so I took that with a bucket of salt. Books were a terrible waste of time. Deplorable. Of course, my MIL was a fantastic housekeeper, while I work to stay ahead of the hairballs rolling under the couch... so they may have a point, there. Of course, MIL could have benefited from some good cookbooks... much less allrecipes.com.

Of course, now that I read about Aunt Emily, it all comes together. I understand the fear of overstuffing their brains, now... It's a deepseated genetic fear.

Being the over-achieving knowledge-whore that I am, though, I of course had to look up exactly what brain congestion was. Sure enough, in the 1850s a scholarly paper was written by James M. Newman (no sense of humor-couldn't be related to Alfred E. Neuman) about Congestion of the Brain in cholera cases. It's on the National Library of Medicine site, if you're as bad as I am. The doctor's chosen treatment is enough to leave you with nightmares, if you survived. He would shave your head, stick it in ice, and then attach leeches to your temples. I don't know what that had to do with vomiting and diarrhea, but it was his theory. Some patients survived, so he figured he had the cure. No wonder the in-laws are still afraid of brain congestion...