You've probably never heard of the malady called milk sickness. It was the scourge of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan in the early 19th century. The story of the condition is disturbing, not only from the number of people who died, but also by the lack of proper scientific investigation, at least by scientists and public health officials.
William Tompkins and Barnet Fowler, farmers in Kenton County, KY, were the first to be officially identified as having died of the mysterious ailment, in 1795. Nearly one fourth of the early settlers in Madison County, OH, fell victim to the pestilence, but the worst recorded incidence was the ‘epidemic’ of 1818 in which nearly all of the residents of Pigeon Creek, IN, were exterminated. The disease’s most famous victim was probably Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham Lincoln, who died of it that same year, in Spencer County, IN.
Dr. Thomas Barbee of Bourbon County, KY, the first to diagnose the disorder, in 1809, understood that his patients became sick as a result of drinking milk or eating butter from cows who trembled, though it wasn’t at all clear to him what was causing the cattle themselves to become ill.
What to do? After decades of milk sickness ravaging the countryside, the research was crowdsourced. Really. The government of Kentucky offered a reward to anyone who could identify the source of the illness. While no one collected the reward, the source was identified. However, it took almost another hundred years for official recognition of the cause of milk disease. Read about the fight against milk disease in a two part post at Appalachian History. -via Digg
