Family Tree magazine: Causes of Deaths

 Environmental, Hereditary, Era ?

The May/June 2015 issue of Family Tree magazine contains an article called Numbers to Die For which includes the Top 10 Causes of Death, Then and Now.

The top 10 causes of death in 1900 according to the Family Tree article were pneumonia or influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infection, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease (such as stroke). Their list of causes of deaths in 2010 are heart disease, cancer, noninfectious airway diseases, cerebrovascular, and accidents.

All deaths in our family in the 1900 time period have not been discernible/discoverable. But in the Szabo/Berger/Binder/Bauer family, heart disease was the cause of a substantial number of deaths during this past 20th century. This would cover their birth dates of 1880-1910 and their death dates of 1960-1980.

Some other causes of death in my family have been murder, brain hemorrhage due to being thrown under the wheels of a team of horses, suicide, drowning in a creek, childbirth, forestry accident, and although the reason is not given "death and buried at sea."

Questions: 
* Are diseases environmental or hereditary and is the time period in   which they lived predicable of causes of their death?
* Were the causes of death in 1900 accurately diagnosed?

Of my two grandmothers and my mother, heart disease was the cause of death. Certificate of death for my father was respiratory caused by his occupation as a carpenter. My grandfather (1874-1911) died of pneumonia at the age of 36 in Hungary (re: the Family tree list). His occupation was brick layer. 

As I entered information on certain children of the Lott family, during 1700-1800, I was definitely affected by the number of children who died at birth or died within the first few years of life and the number of women who died in childbirth or late because of complications from childbirth. (This is also referenced in the Family Tree side bar article that states "Between 1935 and 2010 the risk of dying for children ages 1-4 dropped 94%."

Question:
As researchers of family history we collect dates of birth, marriage, and death. It is essential information to our craft. Do we take good notice of the causes of death? 

Because of this one page article I intent to be more alert to source materials and try to retrieve the cause of death and add it to the genealogical information of my families.