Milk sickness

This article is about poisoning from milk tainted by a plant toxin . For illness due to milk contaminated with bacteria, see Foodborne illness . For ordinary indigestion caused by consuming dairy, see Lactose intolerance.

Milk sickness
Classification and external resources
MeSH	D018602

Milk sickness, also known as tremetol vomiting, or in animals as trembles, is characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain that affects individuals who ingest milk or other dairy products, or meat from a cow that has fed on white snakeroot, which contains the poison tremetol.

Although highly rare today, milk sickness claimed thousands of lives among European-American migrants to the Midwest in the early 19th century in the United States, especially in frontier areas along the Ohio River Valley and its tributaries, because they were unfamiliar with the plant and its properties. A notable victim was Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Nursing calves and lambs may have died from their mothers' milk contaminated with snakeroot, although the adult cows and sheep showed no signs of poisoning. Cattle, horses, and sheep are the animals most often poisoned.

Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby, called Dr. Anna on the frontier, is credited today with identifying white snakeroot as the cause of the illness, but she was said to have been told about the plant's properties by a Shawnee woman she befriended. That woman's name has been lost to history.

History

Milk sickness emerged as a suspected disease in the early 19th century, as European-American migrants moved into the Midwest, first into the areas bordering the Ohio River and its tributaries. They often grazed their cattle in frontier areas where white snakeroot grows. They were unfamiliar with the plant and its properties as it is not found on the East Coast. The high rate of fatalities from milk sickness made people fear it like the infectious diseases of cholera and yellow fever.^[1] Cattle will not graze on the plant unless other forage is not available; but, when pastures are scarce or in times of drought, the cattle would graze in woods, the habitat of white snakeroot.

Milk sickness was first described in writing by a European American in 1809, when Dr. Thomas Barbee of Bourbon County, Kentucky detailed its symptoms.^[2] Variously described as "the trembles", "the slows" or the illness "under which man turns sick and his domestic animals tremble," it was a frequent cause of illness and death. Sometimes half the people in a frontier settlement might die of milk sickness. Doctors used their contemporary treatment of bloodletting, but it had little success as it was unrelated to the cause of the illness.

Cases were identified in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois. The illness was particularly ruinous in Henderson County, Kentucky, along the banks of the Green River. Because of the losses from the illness, on January 29, 1830, the Kentucky General Assembly offered a USD$600 reward to anyone discovering its cause. Many scientists in the area tried to determine the cause of the illness, but without success. Farmers found that only clearing the riverbanks and grazing cattle on tended fields ended the occurrence of milk sickness.^[3]

United States medical science did not officially identify the cause of milk sickness as the tremetol of the white snakeroot plant until 1928, when advances in biochemistry enabled the analysis of the plant's toxin.^[4]

But, anecdotal evidence and local Illinois legend today credit Dr. Anna Pierce Hobbs (1808–1869) of Hardin County, Illinois as the first European American to learn the cause of the illness in the 1830s. She was told about the plant's properties and its effect on humans by an elder Shawnee woman, who had deep knowledge of herbs and plants in the area.^[5] Familiarly called Dr. Anna in her community, Hobbs had come to the Illinois country with her parents, but returned to Philadelphia to study medicine: her studies included nursing, midwifery and dental extraction, the sum of what women at the time could study in medicine.^[4] After her return to southern Illinois, she started practicing and also worked as a teacher. She soon married Isaac Hobbs, son of a neighboring farmer. When milk sickness broke out, Anna Hobbs studied the characteristics of the illness and noted the results in her diary. She determined that it occurred seasonally, beginning in summer and continuing until the first frost. She noted that it was more prominent in cattle than in other animals, and thought it might be due to a plant eaten by the cattle.

The legend says that while following the cattle in search of the cause, Dr. Hobbs happened upon an elderly Shawnee woman, whom she befriended. During their conversations, the Shawnee told her that the white snakeroot plant caused milk sickness in humans. Hobbs tested this by feeding the plant to a calf and saw its poisonous properties when the animal died, as she fed other plants to other calves that survived. She enlisted others in her community to dig up and eradicate the plant from their settlement. Although Dr. Hobbs had learned valuable information from the Shawnee woman and had done additional study to demonstrate proof of it, by her death in 1869, she had received no official credit for her writing about milk sickness.^[4] After her first husband died of pneumonia, Anna Hobbs married Eson Bixby ^[5](this is the surname she is now known by.)

Signs and symptoms

The illness is typically characterized by:

• Loss of appetite
• Abdominal pain
• Violent vomiting
• Constipation
• Severe thirst
• Tremors
• Acetone breath
• Prostration
• Delirium
• Coma
• Death

Milk sickness today

Although the poison tremetol is not inactivated by pasteurization^[6], human milk sickness is uncommon today in the United States. Current practices of animal husbandry generally control the pastures and feed of cattle, and the pooling of milk from many producers lowers the risk of temetrol present in dangerous amounts. Although milk sickness is extremely rare, it can occur if someone drinks contaminated milk or products gathered from a single cow or from a smaller herd that has fed on the white snakeroot plant.

References

1. ^ William D. Snively and Louanna Furbee, "Discoverer of the Cause of Milk Sickness," Journal of the American Medical Association (June 1966)
2. ^ Kleber, John E (1992). "Milk Sickness". The Kentucky Encyclopedia. ISBN 0813117720. http://books.google.com/?id=8eFSK4o--M0C&pg=PA637&lpg=PA637&dq=%22milk+sickness%22+1809. 
3. ^ Walter J. Daly, "'The Slows', The Torment of Milk Sickness on the Midwest Frontier", Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 102, No. 1, March 2006
4. ^ ^{a b c} W. D. Snively, Minnesota Medicine, V. 50, April 1967, pp. 469-476
5. ^ ^{a b} John W. Allen, It Happened in Southern Illinois, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968 (reprint, paperback, 2010 - Googlebook version), pp. 5-6, accessed 1 July 2011
6. ^ "White Snakeroot Intoxication in a Calf", "Purdue University"

External links

• Starling's History of Henderson County, Henderson County, Kentucky History Website

Further reading

• Laurel Bailey (Anna-Jonesboro Community High School (April 1996). "Dr. Anna and the Fight for the Milksick". Illinois History: A Magazine for Young People 49 (3). ISSN 0019-2058. http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/1996/ihy960456.html. , at Illinois Periodicals Online
• Lowell A. Dearinger, "Dr. Anna and the Milksick," Outdoor Illinois (March 1967)