The Milk Sick

Mari did a book report on Abraham Lincoln. In the course of her reading, she came across a reference to Lincoln's Mother dying of the "milk sick." I Googled the phrase, and found the following quote:

a grim mystery that went by various names, from “puking fever” to “river sickness” to “fall
poison.” Later, it became known as the “milk sick.”

In short, it's a condition brought on by livestock eating white snakeroot plants, which then creates a toxin that can have dire effects on humans. It can kill a previously healthy adult in as little as three days, or as long as two weeks. Cattle affected by the toxin are known to have the trembles. The toxin can be carried in milk, butter, cheese, or meat.

A physician described the course of the illness: “When the individual is about to be taken down, he feels weary, trembles more or less under exertion, and often experiences pain, numbness and slight cramps.” Nausea soon follows, then “a feeling of depression and burning at the pit of the stomach,” then retching, twitching, and tossing side to side. Before long, the patient becomes “deathly pale and shrunk up,” listless and indifferent, and lies, between fits of retching, in a “mild coma.”

Each perennial herb is about 2-4 feet tall; the leaves are opposite, simple, toothed, three-nerved; the heads have 8-30 small white flowers without ray flowers

The plant grows throughout the east central and northeastern United States, occuring primarily in rich, well-shaded forest soils or at the interface between forests and croplands.

I found references on the web to white snake root being used as a medicinal herb and used for tea in the late 19th century!

I found on the web a document written in 1906 which described how the milk sick affected settlers in northern Ohio in the second half of the 19th century. It mentions how people recognized that it most affected livestock allowed to roam in the woods, but not all woods, and some people thought it was caused by water.

The 1906 document mentions a northern Ohio sheep herder who discovered that when sheep new to the region were released in his pasture, they grazed on the white snake root, developed the trembles and died. Other sheep which he had owned for some time and which were used to the region, avoided the white snake root plants. The sheep herder then embarked on a campaign to destroy the noxious plant.

In another time, the story of the white snakeroot could only be explained as a curse or blight on a region. - something akin to magic. Some time ago Arthur C. Clarke made the observation that any sufficiently advanced technology will be explained as magic by those less technologically advanced.