Cause of child's death, please?

[Isabel H]

1861 Canada West census
Cause of death of Mary Lindsay, dau. of John & Catherine, who died aged 4 mths. Is it mis-spelt Inflamation?

[Gadget]

I think it's a spelling mistake - it looks like Imflamation  and should be Inflammation!

[Viktoria]

It looks a bit like Infalmation ,but so faint and blurred not easy to say and most probably meaning  Inflammation as Gadget says .
Viktoria.

[janan]

Actually looks like Iinfalmtion to me, but I would agree it is likely to be inflammation.

[Isabel H]

Thanks Gadget, Viktoria and janan.  As I thought, just a spelling mistake.

[Zaphod99]

A doctor making a spelling mistake like that, a very common word, seems a little bit unlikely and I'd have thought a part of the body would be mentioned as well if it was inflammation.

Also, I think there is a letter before the in.....  I don't think that character is connected to the number four. A larger image might help.

My next guess was infantilism, q.v., but again it doesn't quite look right.

(Infantilism, also known as infantile speech, a speech disorder in which early speech stages persist beyond the age they are normally expected to fade.)

But I've never heard of anybody dying of it.

Zaph

[Gadget]

(Infantilism, also known as infantile speech, a speech disorder in which early speech stages persist beyond the age they are normally expected to fade.)

But I've never heard of anybody dying of it.

The child was 4 months old!

PS - the letter is a capt I

[Isabel H]

A doctor making a spelling mistake like that, a very common word, seems a little bit unlikely

Thank you for taking time to look at this.
I agree, but this was in a census column for anyone who had died in the previous year, so it was probably the child's father, or the census enumerator, who spelt it like that.  I'm happy to accept it is inflammation and not some rare disease.

[Zaphod99]

I'm accepting the capital 'I' but then there is another letter before what might be 'n'.

Zaph