Old medical term "waste" ?

[Treefan]

Can anyone tell me please what the old medical term "waste" means?
We have just obtained a death certificate and this is what is listed as the cause of death but we don't know what it means.

Thank you.
Treefan.

[pinot]

"A wasting of the body by disease" is the appropriate definition I think from the Shorter Oxford Dictionary; it also says that the use is rare, now dialect.
                          Pinot 
Remembered too that "wasting away" was an (?)unscientific way of describing a person's deterioration. The wasting disease, phthisis from the Greek, used to be a way of describing what is called Tuberculosis in modern times. Perhaps it was a standard medical term for cause of death at the time.

[Treefan]

I can't thank you enough for your kind help.

Treefan.

[Strangways]

Waste or wasting was a medical description for a chronic disease that caused the gradual or sometimes quite aggressive debility of the patient. Commonly used as a description in tuberculosis but not exclusively so, for example it was seen in diabetes especially insulin deficiency or type 1 before we had insulin, the patient would literally waste away. Sometimes associated with extreme effects of age as well. So it is not a diagnosis really it is a description of the patients illness.

[Treefan]

Thank you so much for your very kind help.