The Bulletin 
67 
that foreign substances find entrance into the milk. Furthermore, the 
medical practitioner well knows that such substances as opium, mor¬ 
phine, and atropin may pass into the mother’s milk and act on the 
nursing child. Not only do organic substances pass into the milk, but 
many inorganic substances as well,J as arsenic, iodine, lead, zinc, mer¬ 
cury, iron, bismuth, and antimony. 
Means of Prevention and Cure 
Prophylactic or preventive measures, rather than curative measures, 
are to be employed in dealing with trembles and milksickness, particu¬ 
larly in the case of domestic animals. In districts where the disease 
was prevalent, early settlers found, by keeping their animals from pas¬ 
turing upon certain lands or by cutting down the timber and exposing 
the land to sunlight, that they could avoid the disease. They further¬ 
more found that by plowing dangerous areas and seeding them to culti¬ 
vated forage plants, they could render them safe for their stock. The 
employment of either of these preventive measures is in some localities 
practicable under North Carolina conditions. Where the timbered 
lands are under the control of timber companies it is not feasible to 
clear them, and furthermore it would in many places not be advisable 
to do so because of the value of the timber. If it is possible to clear 
the land, it should be done since white snakeroot is intolerant to full 
sunlight. Areas occupied by this weed might in some cases be fenced 
off, some of them might be mown several times during a growing sea¬ 
son, or might even be plowed up. Since the weed is perennial rooted, a 
single mowing off of the tops, or even a single plowing, would not de¬ 
stroy all of the plants. The destruction of at most a few acres of white 
snakeroot will in many large pastures render an otherwise dangerous 
pasture harmless. 
Various forms of treatment have been suggested for animals suffering 
from the disease, but the nature of the changes within the internal 
organs, as has been described, are such as to extend little hope that 
beneficial results can follow medication. Among the classes of drugs 
which veterinarians employ are cathartics such as eserin, internal anti¬ 
septics, and nerve stimulants, but without consistent remedial effects. 
Large doses of sodium bicarbonate are relied upon by others to effect 
a cure. 
Our own experimental work on this phase of the problem has been 
confined to the use of common salt and baking soda, since the accounts 
of Moseley (1910) and others suggest that sodium compounds have anti- 
tVide, Hammarsten and Hedin, a text-book of Physiological Chemistry, 7th edit., 1914, 
p. 671. 
