November 36, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



48a 



fact, and that hundreds die annually, in places far 

 distant from the localities of its origination, by the use 

 of meat and butter shipped from such places, as the 

 dairy products of localities infected with this scourge 

 have to seek a market from home ; and as a natural 

 sequence they find their way into the large cities, 

 thus placing the fatal poison into the mouths of 

 many. 



Physicians unacquainted with it are apt, after 

 diagnosing it, to give it fever treatment ; and the 

 resultant sequence is, that the patient dies. So the 

 physician soon finds that he has a disease that in its 

 special pathology, from the closest observation, he 

 has given a febrile nosology ; yet the febrile thera- 

 peutics only hasten dissolution. From its febrile 

 semeiology, it is likely to mislead those not familiar 

 with it in its diagnosis. 



The effect of milk-sickness upon ' dry cattle,' males 

 and sucklings, is death ; but the milk-giving cow ex- 

 cretes the poison in the lacteal fluid, and receives but 

 little, if any, perceptible injury from it. The butter- 

 milk is said to be as harmless as that from well 

 cattle, while the sweet milk and butter hold the 

 poison ; yet, from the statement of many, it does not 

 seem to be held in solution after the milk is drawn 

 from the cow, but seems to have a magnetic attrac- 

 tion for itself, thus segregating all its minute particles 

 from the milk or butter, conglomerating and con- 

 glutinating into one imperceptible particle until 

 swallowed by some one, when the virus at once be- 

 comes active. It is stated, upon seemingly good 

 authority, that of a milking, if drank while sweet, 

 although a dozen persons may partake of it, yet only 

 one will contract the disease ; and the same state- 

 ment is made as regards the use of the butter made 

 at one churning. 



This disease occurs among cattle that browse on 

 the north side of the Blue Ridge and foothills, and 

 in dark rich coves where there is but very little sun- 

 shine. It is positively stated, that, if the cattle in 

 the localities where the disease prevails are not 

 allowed to graze until after the dew evaporates, the 

 disease will not appear, provided they are driven 

 from the place before the dew begins to accumulate 

 in the evening ; but, when a cow eats any of the 

 herbage with the dew on it, milk-sickness is the 

 sequence. This is the unanimous statement of native 

 residents in localities where it originates. 



The following experiments have been made with it 

 in Macon county, N.C. : One man placed a couple of 

 bundles of corn-fodder out in the evening, and took 

 them the next morning before sunrise, with the dew 

 on them, and gave them to a yearling. It died in 

 about three days with the disease. Another person 

 placed a piece of good, fresh beef on a rock near a 

 brook after sunset, and the next morning early he 

 gave it to a healthy dog, which ate it, ancj died in 

 four days of the disease. This evidence would tend 

 to show that it was not induced in cattle from 

 poisonous plants, but from a poison held in solution 

 in the dew, and that it evaporates with the dew. 



One Dr. Cauler, last year, in the Blue Ridge Enter- 

 prise, published at Webster, N.C, in writing of the 

 etiology of the disease, stated that it was caused by 

 arsenical poisoning. He said that there were cupreous 

 deposits in the localities where it occurred, and that 

 the "solar heat freed the arsenic from the copper, 

 which the dew held in solution on the herbage ; " yet 

 it occurs in localities where no copper has been 

 found. And then, a gentleman who has manufac- 



tured arsenic says that it would be unnatural for 

 copper to give off arsenic so easily and so freely. 



Another opinion is, that it is caused by the cattle's 

 eating a poisonous fungus, as it has been found in 

 the stomach of a cow that died with the disease. 

 Webster, in defining milk-sickness, concludes by 

 saying, 'Its cause is unknown.' 



There are localities in Macon county, N.C, that 

 offer excellent opportunities for studying and 

 investigating fully that disease ; and in the 

 same county, at Smith's Bridge post-office, 

 lives Dr. Brabson, who, it is claimed, is the only 

 physician in the county that fully understands the 

 treatment of the disease. This is a matter worthy 

 of investigation, and is really of more interest to 

 the public than they are aware, as reasons given in 

 the beginning of this letter show. 



J. W. Walker. 

 Pine Mountain, Ga., Nov. 6. 



[The disease to which our correspondent alludes in 

 the foregoing letter was known in North Carolina 

 during the past century, but was first brought to the 

 attention of the medical profession about the year 

 1813. It subsequently appeared in Tennessee, Ken- 

 tucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and other portions of 

 the country. A very interesting account of this 

 disease, and references to numerous writers, will be 

 found in Wood's 'Practice of medicine.' As to the 

 causation of the disease, very many theories have 

 been held, although it seems to be generally conceded 

 that the disease disappears as soon as the region 

 where it exists becomes cleared up and cultivated. 

 Some authorities have attributed to it, both in cattle 

 and in man, a malarial origin ; others have thought 

 it to be caused by the poison vine, Rhus radicans. 

 On this subject Dr. Wood many years ago said, "It 

 appears to me that there is but one mode of approach- 

 ing an explanation of these various phenomena. 

 Providence may have planted in the rotten soil of 

 our new lands certain germs, etc. Of the nature of 

 these germs we are quite ignorant. They may be 

 microscopic animalcules or mushrooms." Dr. Phil- 

 lips observed cases on the upper water of Scioto, 

 Ohio, and found in the blosd "a great number of 

 living, moving, spiral bacteria, similar, in their 

 general appearance, to those spiral bacteria described 

 by Professor Lebert as abounding in the blood of 

 relapsing-fever patients. I also found in the urine 

 of that patient those same spiral bacteria, and, co- 

 existing with them, the sphero-bacteria, in segments 

 of two to six or eight" Dr. Schmitt, who observed 

 cases in the same region, found no bacteria in their 

 blood. Professor Law, in the National board of 

 health bulletin, vol. ii., No. 4, p. 456, says that " in 

 its source, in unimproved marshy localities, it closely 

 resembles the malignant anthrax, also in its com- 

 municability to all animals ; but it differs essentially 

 in that it fails to show anthrax lesions, in place of 

 which it expends its energy on the nerve-centres, pro- 

 ducing great hebetude and loss of muscular power. 

 The germ is probably derived from drinking water, or 

 the surfaces of vegetables, as certain wells are found 

 to infect with certainty, and the disease has been 

 repeatedly produced by feeding upon particular 

 plants (Rhus toxicodendron, etc.). That these plants, 

 in themselves, are not the pathogenic elements, is 

 shown by their innocuous properties when grown in 

 places out of the region of milk-sickness infection. 

 The great danger of this affection consists in tha 

 conveyance of the germ with unimpaired potency 



