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polydipsia, and vomiting may be noted. As the effects of the poison progress, signs of constipation, appetite loss, weakness, and difficulty standing and/or walking are usually observed. Complete loss of muscle coordination, stupor, and/or coma precede death. Death usually occurs within two to ten days of symptom onset. Signs unique to cattle and sheep include peculiar odors found in the breath and urine, breathing difficulties, and over-salivation. Symptoms unique to horses include depression, bloody urine, and choking. In addition to increased heart rate and jugular pulse, swelling around the thoracic inlet is also observed. Horses may also stand with their hind legs wide apart. Symptoms unique to guinea pigs include crouching with half-closed eyes and roughening of the hair. Treatment for milk sickness is typically symptom amelioration, as well as administration of laxatives, sodium lactate, glucose, or hypotonic
271:, the sum of what women at the time could study in medicine. After her return to southern Illinois, she started practicing and also worked as a teacher. She was familiarly called Dr. Anna. 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 which the cattle were eating.
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survived. With that evidence, she gathered members of her community to dig up and eradicate the plant from their settlement. Although Dr. Hobbs learned valuable information from the
Shawnee woman and did additional study to demonstrate proof of it, by her death in 1869, she had received no official credit from the medical community for her writing about milk sickness. After her first husband died of pneumonia, Anna Hobbs married Eson Bixby; she subsequently came to be known by his surname.
201:, detailed its symptoms. 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. The fatality rate was so high that sometimes half the people in a frontier settlement might die of milk sickness. Doctors used their contemporary treatment of
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and its tributaries, which were their main transportation routes. They often grazed their cattle in frontier areas where white snakeroot grows; it is a member of the daisy family. They were unfamiliar with the plant and its properties, as it is not found on the East Coast. The high rate of fatalities
194:, whose causes were not understood at the time. Cattle do not graze on the plant unless other forage is not available. When pastures were scarce or in times of drought, the cattle would graze in woods, the habitat of white snakeroot. Early settlers often let their livestock roam freely in the woods.
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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 tremetol being present in dangerous amounts. The poison tremetol is not inactivated by
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An early sign in several animals including cattle, sheep, and guinea pigs is listlessness, which is commonly followed by significant loss of weight and pronounced trembling in the legs and muzzle. These signs often appear several hours after ingestion of white snakeroot. Signs of abdominal pain,
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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 observed its poisonous properties when the animal died; she had fed other plants to other calves that
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offered a $ 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.
260:, is credited in the 21st century as the first person to learn the specific cause of the illness back in the 1830s. She first learned of the plant's properties and its effect on humans from an elder Shawnee woman, who had deep knowledge of herbs and plants in the area.
125:, may have been a victim of the poison. Nursing calves and lambs may have also died from their mothers' milk contaminated with snakeroot even when the adult cows and sheep showed no signs of poisoning. Cattle, horses, and sheep are the animals most often poisoned.
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pasteurization. Although extremely rare, milk sickness can occur if a person drinks contaminated milk or eats dairy products gathered from a single cow or from a smaller herd that has fed on the white snakeroot plant. There is no cure, but treatment is available.
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How could a disease, perhaps the leading cause of death and disability in the
Midwest and Upper South for over two centuries, go unrecognized by the medical profession at large until 1928?
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is credited today by the
American medical community with having identified white snakeroot as the cause of the illness. Allegedly, she was told about the plant's properties by an elderly
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American medical science did not officially identify the cause of milk sickness as the tremetol of the white snakeroot plant until 1928, when advances in
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Milk sickness was suspected as a disease in the early 19th century as migrants moved into the
Midwest; they first settled in areas bordering the
509:, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968 (reprint, paperback, 2010 – Googlebook version), pp. 5–6, accessed July 1, 2011
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Valley and its tributaries where white snakeroot was prevalent. New settlers were unfamiliar with the plant and its properties.
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is a kind of poisoning, characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain, that affects individuals who ingest
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This article is about poisoning from milk tainted by a plant toxin. For illness due to milk contaminated with bacteria, see
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The legend says that while following the cattle in search of the cause, Dr. Hobbs happened upon an elderly
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Introduction/Index – Plants Toxic to
Animals – LibGuides at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Snively, William D.; Furbee, Louanna (June 20, 1966). "Discoverer of the Cause of Milk
Sickness".
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FURBEE, LOUANNA; SNIVELY, W. D. (January 1, 1968). "Milk
Sickness, 1811–1966: A Bibliography".
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Although very rare today, milk sickness claimed thousands of lives among migrants to the
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Hobbs had migrated as a girl to the
Illinois country with her parents. She returned to
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woman she befriended, after which Bixby did testing to observe and document evidence.
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Walter J. Daly, "'The Slows', The
Torment of Milk Sickness on the Midwest Frontier"
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Milk sickness was first described in writing in 1809, when Dr. Thomas Barbee of
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Kim Maratea, "Final Diagnosis: White Snakeroot Intoxication in a Calf"
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Cone, Jr., Thomas E. (1993). "Milk Sickness (Tremetol Poisoning)".
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Laurel Bailey (Anna-Jonesboro Community High School) (April 1996).
236:. Because of the losses from the illness, on January 29, 1830, the
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in the early 19th century, especially in frontier areas along the
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383:, Health Upgrades, August 13, 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2017.
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98:, other dairy products, or meat from a cow that has fed on
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from milk sickness made people fear it as they did the
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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
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JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
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172:--William Snively, "Mystery of the milksick" (1967)
552:Lowell A. Dearinger, "Dr. Anna and the Milksick",
377:Diseases: Treatments for White snakeroot poisoning
341:"How an 1800s Midwife Solved a Poisonous Mystery"
676:Toxic effect of noxious substances eaten as food
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529:Illinois History: A Magazine for Young People
662:, Henderson County, Kentucky History Website
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562:VIII.90: Milk Sickness (Tremetol Poisoning)
399:Purdue University, accessed January 9, 2012
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57:, the toxic plant that causes milk sickness
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525:"Dr. Anna and the Fight for the Milksick"
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506:It Happened in Southern Illinois
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462:The Kentucky Encyclopedia
238:Kentucky General Assembly
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456:Kleber, John E. (1992).
283:Notable possible victims
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111:Midwestern United States
397:Winter 2003 Newsletter,
258:Hardin County, Illinois
129:Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby
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345:Smithsonian Magazine
547:on October 6, 2008.
417:Minnesota Medicine,
289:Nancy Hanks Lincoln
184:infectious diseases
119:Nancy Hanks Lincoln
90:or, in animals, as
54:Ageratina altissima
25:Lactose intolerance
139:Signs and symptoms
68:Medical toxicology
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437:(12): 1055–1060.
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218:Tennessee
92:trembles,
63:Specialty
670:Category
350:July 14,
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226:Illinois
214:Kentucky
104:tremetol
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609:4875594
276:Shawnee
222:Indiana
188:cholera
161:History
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250:toxin
639:MeSH
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