Jeff Rankin: Undertaker’s wife had interesting life
Jeff Rankin
The Rankin File
One of the frustrations of researching 19th-century life in western Illinois is that married women were generally regarded as wives and not as individuals. Even their obituaries often failed to disclose their first names. They were Mrs. (husband’s last name) and they were only recognized in light of how they complemented their spouses.
Occasionally, when women had long been widowed and reached an advanced age, their obituaries would actually chronicle their personal life experiences. Such was the case with Anna Belle Blair White, who died Dec. 12, 1955, at age 97, after having fallen in her home and suffering a hip fracture three weeks earlier.
For molecular biologist Warren Tate, his most recent research project is personal. The Otago University Emeritus Professor has been on a 30-year crusade to learn more about the mysterious illness which struck his daughter Katherine at the age of 14. She had suffered a bout of Glandular Fever when she developed Myalgic Encephalamyelitis (ME), also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (the preferred term is now ME/CFS).
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Professor Warren Tate’s research into ME is personal after his daughter was diagnosed with the condition. “There were dramatic symptoms of pervasive fatigue, brain fog, sensitivities to light and sound, and she became allergic to everything she ate… and so of course this was traumatic, and we went to the medical system and no one really knew anything about the disease”, Tate says.