Milk Sickness and the Mystery of Dr. Anna

It took a while to figure out the cause of milk sickness. One woman often gets credit for solving the mystery, but does that story hold up?

Research:

Allen, John W. “It Happened in Southern Illinois: The Legend of Dr. Anna Bigsby.” The Daily Register. Harrisburg, IL. 1957. Allen, John W. “It Happened in Southern Illinois.” Southern Illinois University. 1968. “Disease in Ohio, Ascribed to Some Deleterious Quality in Milk of Cows.” The Medical Repository May-July 1811: Vol 3.  Daly, Walter J. “’The "Slows’: The Torment of Milk Sickness on the Midwest Frontier. Indiana Magazine of History , MARCH 2006, Vol. 102, No. 1 (MARCH 2006). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27792690 Furbee, Louanna and Dr. Wiliam D. Snively Jr. “Milk Sickness, 1811-1966: A Bibliography.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences , July, 1968, Vol. 23, No. 3 (July, 1968). https://www.jstor.org/stable/24621944 Hall, Elihu N. “Anna’s War Against the River Pirates and Cave Bandits of John A. Murrell’s Northern Drive.” Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Hardin County (Ill.). Historical Committee for the Centennial. “History of Hardin County, Illinois.” 1939. https://archive.org/details/historyofhardinc00hard Jordan, Philip D. “The Death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln.” Indiana Magazine of History , JUNE, 1944, Vol. 40, No. 2 (JUNE, 1944). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27787425. Letter, W. D. Snively Jr. to Lowell Dearinger, with correspondence by Norman Ferrell, June 12, 1967. John W. Allen Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. “Lowell A. Dearinger.” https://www.choisser.org/illinois/lowell.html McCarthy, Will. “How an 1800s Midwife Solved a Poisonous Mystery.” Smithsonian. July/August 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-1800s-midwife-solved-poisionous-mystery-180982343/ Rodman, Adam. “Episode 67: Fever on the Frontier.” Bedside Rounds. Podcast. 3/20/2022. http://bedside-rounds.org/episode-67-fever-on-the-frontier/ A.W. “Reviewed Work: Ballads from the Bluffs by Elihu Nicholas Hall.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984), Vol. 42, No. 1 (Mar., 1949). https://www.jstor.org/stable/40188361. Scientific American. “Milk Sickness—Its Cause and Cure.” 4/17/1858. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/milk-sicknessits-cause-and-cure/ Shawnee Tribe. “History of the People.” https://www.shawnee-nsn.gov/history Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. “Shawnee Nation Case Study.” https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/removal-six-nations/shawnee/treaty.cshtml Snively, William D. Jr. and Louanna Furbee. “Discoverer of the Cause of Milk Sickness.” JAMA. June 20, 1966. Snively, William D. Jr. and Louanna Furbee. “Researching a Historical Book.” JAMA. April 7, 1969. Waggoner, F.R. “Milk Sickness: Its Etiology, Pathology, Diagnosis, and Treatment.” Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal. March 1859. Walker, J.W. “Milk-Sickness.” Science, Vol. 8, No. 199 (Nov. 26, 1886). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1760447 William I. Christensen. “Milk Sickness: A Review of the Literature.” Economic Botany, vol. 19, no. 3, 1965, pp. 293–300. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4252612. Accessed 19 July 2023. Wood, Curtis W. “Milk Sickness.” NCPedia. 2006. https://www.ncpedia.org/milk-sickness

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