Somewhere during browsing, I found this story about the Trembles:
It’s worth reading the whole thing, here:
https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2019/02/the-curse-of-milk-sickness-part-1-of-2.html
https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2019/02/the-curse-of-milk-sickness-part-2-of-2.html
THE TREMBLES was apparently a big deal around the 1800s. It killed Abe Lincoln’s mom!
The article quotes a doctor’s description of the symptoms:
The following year, Dr. Daniel Drake of Ohio published a description of the symptoms in Notices Concerning Cincinnati:
https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2019/02/the-curse-of-milk-sickness-part-1-of-2.html
“It almost invariably commences with a general weakness and lassitude, which increase in the most gradual manner. About the same time, or soon after, a dull pain, or rather soreness, begins to affect the calves of the legs, occasionally extending up to the thighs. The appetite becomes rather impaired, and in some cases, nearly suspended; sensations of a disagreeable kind affect the stomach upon taking food.”
Drake, however, did not name the disease and apparently at the time of this first published piece did not even connect its occurrence with tainted milk.
For a while, it was just a mysterious thing that people would randomly drop dead from. Eventually they figured out it happened when someone drank milk from a cow that was trembling.
So there was some disease killing cows, spreading to the milk, killing humans, and people were trying to figure out what to do about it. Enter the Scientist.
“From his study of the etiology Drake suggested five plants that might cause milk sickness… He narrowed the plants down to white snakeroot and poison ivy, then rejected the former because it was so common and had no poisonous properties.”
By this time people were more or less aware that there was some kind of plant that the cows were eating, but no one was sure which one it was.
I mean, some farmer guy had done actual experiments and found his own cows died from eating snakeroot two years back, but that doesn’t count:
“Meanwhile, in 1838, Fayette County, OH farmer John Rowe, suspecting that white snakeroot might be the cause of milk sickness, fed leaves from the plant to some of his animals. Sure enough, they developed the disease and died. The farmer published his exciting find in the local newspaper. But farmers don’t make medical discoveries, do they? No, at that time, only certified professionals were allowed to make discoveries.”…
Silly rabbit! Farmers don’t do science!
Drake commented on John Rowe’s experiments in The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery: “It must be admitted that the plant on which Mr. Rowe experimented possesses some active properties, as four animals under its use died with what were pronounced to be symptoms of Trembles.
Still, the mode of conducting the experiments differed too widely from that in which the animal is likely to eat the poisonous plant—in the woods—and the decision that the animals killed by it had the Trembles is far from conclusive or binding.
“A professional scrutiny only can be relied on in such cases. The testimony adduced by Mr. Rowe is therefore defective and inconclusive, even if nothing could be found to oppose it; but there are several facts which directly invalidate it.”
Because Drake was such a prominent physician and scientist, his theories were accepted by most in the mainstream medical establishment.
And with that, Snakeroot was Officially Ruled Out by Official Science. Stop talking about it. Why are you still talking about it?
Meanwhile…
Another doctor, also trying to figure out what was going on, goes investigating in her area. Locals say it was a witch’s potion, but she doesn’t like that explanation, and keeps investigating.
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.
Legend says that while following the cattle in search of the cause, Dr. Bixby happened upon a Shawnee Indian woman who told her that white snakeroot plant caused milk sickness.
Man, it’s bad enough that farmers think they can do science. Indians don’t even HAVE scientists! It turns out that ‘direct observation’, having ‘hypotheses’, and doing ’empirical testing’ don’t win you any favors from Official Science despite getting county-wide results:
She tested the hypothesis by feeding the plant to a calf, demonstrating its poisonous properties. Dr. Bixby and others in the community then began a campaign to eradicate the plant from the area.
Although Dr. Bixby 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.
Decades after local professionals figure it out, the Official Scientist position is THOSE FUCKING LAYMEN:
Despite its position as an official representative of government health policy, the NIH report makes no mention whatsoever of Bixby’s or Rowe’s experiments, and still considers milk sickness uncured:
“Satisfactory accounts of the disease are rare.
Drake, who is much quoted in all accounts of the disease, appears not to have been personally familiar with the malady; indeed in his memoir he states that he has seen no case in man, nor in the lower animals.
Yandell, who is also frequently quoted and has written much on the subject, makes no mention of having himself seen cases, and in his later publications expresses grave doubt as to the existence of a specific disease corresponding to that described as milk sickness.
“In his own words: ‘Upon a review of the whole matter the conclusion to which all the testimony on the subject has brought me is that we who have written upon milk sickness have been egregiously imposed upon by careless and incompetent observers.’…
Finally, nearly one hundred and thirty years after the first person was diagnosed with the trembles… and over eighty years after various local professionals had noticed, investigated, identified, and dealt with the cause of the trembles…
Official Science catches up.
Finally, in 1928, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, led by Dr. James Couch, isolated from white snakeroot a highly complex alcohol they named tremetol, and the American Medical Association recognized that Eupatorium rugosum was the cause of the milk sickness. The culprit plant had, finally, been officially discovered. As this information spread throughout the medical and agricultural communities, fencing laws and supervised milk production largely solved the milk sickness problem.
Who could have seen that coming? That’s why I say that the best source of information is obscure blogs by talented hobbyists with less on the line politically than an Official Scientist. After all, SCIENCE Proves That Obscure Blogs Are The Only Possible Source Of Reliable Information.
Boneflour 