I have 'decline' on a death cert - also a fair few with 'asthenia' as a cause of death in youngish adults. Makes me think that perhaps poor nutrition and unaffordable medical care played a large part.
I think that 'decline' was sometimes put as the cause of death for someone who had had TB. oops, I see AM already suggested that.
According to "A Dictionary of Medical & Related Terms for the Family Historian" by Joan E Grundy, decline is a gradual loss of general health and strength. It's not usually applied to the natural process of decay associated with old age, but to the loss of vitality in younger people due to any disorder which slowly and steadily weakens the whole body, leading to death. "Could be any number of chronic diseases such as anaemia, tuberculosis, diabetes or asthma." Chimp - your first post said this was 1939, which surprised me as I thought the term had stopped being used by then. Then (#18) you give a burial in 1839, and the year is confirmed by FreeBMD. This seems much more the right period to find Decline - probably greater access to medical care, increased medical knowledge and a greater use of post mortems have led to it being replaced by more precise diagnoses. For what it's worth, I have 3 instances of Decline, all taken from parish registers, and all female, though that might not be relevant: 1797 (aged about 37); 1801 (aged nearly 6 months); and 1803 (aged 24).
Thank you Arthur. Mixing up of dates is becoming a forte of mine lately . I need to take my head off and give it a good shake Have now amended the date to show 1839
Nowadays, especially with infants, it is sometimes called "failure to thrive," which sounds more like a symptom than a cause.
According to his certificate the primary cause of my 3X great grandfather's death days short of his 90th birthday was "Exhaustion", which at first seemed to me to be an alternative to Decline. However he was a woodsman on the former Moxhall Hall Estate, now the Belfry Golf Club near Sutton Coldfield, and according to estate documents dated 2 years before he died, he was a tenant in a cottage set in 2.7 acres, which he maintained "in very good order". So perhaps he didn't decline, but worked himself to death. His last census entry says he was deaf, and a cousin reckons he couldn't hear people telling him to slow down.
