D. C. Danielssen. 



49 



VI. 



Danielssen was inarried on the 2 Ist April 1839 to Berthe Marie 

 Olsen (born 8th Febr. 1818, diecl 1875; daughter of the tailor 

 Stephen Olsen of Kristiania, and of Anne Sophie Gunnæs), by whom 

 he had four children, three daughter s, Fredrikke, who died in 

 1869, Ålfhilde, who married Chr. Larsen, director of the Mercantile 

 Gymnasium, and died 1873, Fanny, who married head-surgeon 

 G. A. Hansen and died 1873; and Henrik, who died as a medical 

 student at the age of 25. Danielssen' s children all died of the same 

 disease, tuberculosis in the lungs, from which their father had suffered 

 in his youth, but from which he recovered, without any lasting injury, 

 as the state of his health up to late years was pretty good, 

 with the exception of rheumatism, which troubled him greatly. 

 Touching the state of his health during the last years, a biographer, 

 his medical attendant dr. EL Hanssen, writes in the "Medical Review" : 



„The three last winters made him rather anæmic, but the 

 summers pulled him up again. This winter the anæmia developed 

 stronger than before; in the month of April he was seized with 

 pneumoni a in the right lung, but he got over this ; afterwards his 

 anæmic conclition became worse and worse; the last examination of 

 his blood, made a few days before his death, showed only 1 V2 mill. 

 red blood corpuscles; in the last weeks a rapidly increasing dyspnoe, 

 without physical assignable cause from the lungs or heart, testified 

 to a failing action of the heart, and on the 13th of July at 8 p. m. 

 death ensued (after a few moments of struggle) in consequence of 

 a paralysis of the heart. 



He met death with fortitude, being only afraid of a lingering 

 death. This he was spared, and his energetic mind was active 

 to the last; within a few hours of his death, he spoke with lively 

 interest of a case of actinomycosis which had for the first time 

 been noticed in Western Norway, after which, until close upon the 

 moment of his death, he conversed with dr. Brunchorst, secretary of 

 the museum, on the affairs of the institution. A post mortem examina- 

 tion showed a stiffhess of the hip joint with several fistulas (he had at 

 the age of sixteen, and for several years afterwards, suffered from 

 inflammation of the hip) and rather large cicatrices of old stand- 

 ing at the upper part of both lungs (in his youth he had suffered 

 from hæmoptysis), and fatty degeneration of the heart. With 

 exception of the strongly developed anæmia, all his other organs 

 were sound, without any sign of changes consequent on old age." 



