Milk sickness

Milk sickness also known as tremetol poisoning or in animals as trembles is characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain that affects individuals who eat dairy products or meat from a cow that has fed on white snakeroot. Although highly rare today, milk sickness claimed thousands of lives in the early 1800s, perhaps the most well-known victim being Abraham Lincoln'smother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Nursing calves and lambs may die from their mothers' milk contaminated with snakeroot even though the mother animals show no signs of poisoning. Cattle, horses, and sheep are the animals most often poisoned.

History

Milk sickness was a frequent cause of illness and death in the Midwest and rural South during the nineteenth century, sometimes killing as many as half the people in a particular settlement. Since cattle will not graze on this plant unless other forage is not available; however, when pastures are scarce or in times of drought, cattle will graze in woods because of the abundance of green plants.

"For some years prior to 1830, the milk sickness had made its appearance in Kentucky, but during this year, it was unusually annoying and frightful in Henderson County. Particularly along the banks of Green River, it did its work undiscovered. Scientists endeavored to discover the true cause of the disease, but all their efforts failed. January 29, the Legislature of Kentucky offered a reward of six hundred dollars to the discovery of the cause, and a specific cure, yet no discovery was ever made. It was only with the clearing up of the woods and timbered lands, that the dread disease disappeared." History of Henderson County, KY by E. L. Starling, Page 165

While medical science did not officially recognize the cause of milk sickness as the white snakeroot plant until well into the 20th century, anecdotal and legend points to Dr. Anna Pierce Hobbs Bigsby (1808-1869) as the first to discover the disease's cause. Many residents in Anna's community blamed milk sickness on potions scattered by witches. This explanation didn't satisfy Anna, and determined to find the cause, she studied the disease and its characteristics. She determined that the illness was seasonal, beginning in summer and continuing until the first frost. It was more prominent in cattle than in other animals, suggesting the cause might be a plant eaten by the cattle.

The legend says that while following the cattle in search of the cause, she happened upon a Shawnee Indian woman who told her that white snakeroot plant caused milk sickness. Anna tested the hypothesis by feeding the plant to a calf, demonstrating its poisonous properties. She and others in the community then began a campaign to eradicate the plant from the area.

Although Anna was correct in her analysis, when she died in 1869, she had received no official recognition for her discovery of the cause of milk sickness.

Signs and Symptoms

The disease is typically characterized by:

• weakness
• loss of appetite
• abdominal pain
• violent vomiting
• constipation
• severe thirst
• tremors
• acetone breath
• prostration
• delirium
• coma
• death

Disease today

Although tremetol is not inactivated by pasteurization, human disease is uncommon today due to current practices of animal husbandry and the pooling of milk from many producers. Although rare, the disease can occur if someone drinks milk gathered from a single cow or from a smaller herd.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk+sickness Wikipedia article Milk sickness.