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
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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hello, and welcome to the podcast I'm tracy v wilson, and I'm highly for quite a while ago, long enough that I cannot find the message now. In spite of a lot of looking, we got a request to do an episode on someone called DR anna and after a little bit of digging. I piece together that the person being referenced was anna pierce hobbs bigsby, which is sometimes misspelled as bixby with an axe. She is often credited with discovering the cause of milk sickness, but then her discuss
we was totally overlooked by the medical community. She came back to my attention recently after I read an article on this that I found really frustrating and we will get to why I found it frustrating, but basically I got real fired up about it and I moved her up to the top of the list and then during research I
and a whole other layer of stuff to be frustrated about, and we all get to that too. So today, this episode is divided roughly into three acts. First will talk about what milk sickness was, since most people are not likely to have had any experience with it today then, we'll take a look at how the medical understanding of milk sick this progressed
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then will finish with a look at this woman who became known ass, doktor anna and that part is going to go in a somewhat different direction. For most of our
Besides, there are a lot of illnesses that can be transmitted through milk, especially unpatched arise milk early
this year we talked about outbreaks of scarlet fever that were connected to milk in the nineteenth century and prior to the widespread use of pasture relation people contracted diseases like typhoid, diphtheria, bovine.
four kilos is and various gastro intestinal illnesses all from milk, but milk sickness doesn't
I come from a micro organism. It is a type of poisoning. At least two different plants are believed to cause this type of poisoning. One is white, snake root, which is also called rich weed and some older texts. This is a perennial plant that grows to about five feet or one and a half meters tall it blooms in the late summer and into the fall with clusters of fluffy white flowers. This plant is native to the eastern half of north america, like all the way to texas on the far western end. It likes the shade. So a lot of the time it's found along the edges of
blends. The other plant is re with golden rod and that's native to parts of the south west united states. This is another perennial: it produces bright, yellow flowers, and it also goes to a height of roughly five feet. Each of these plants can contain.
Varying amounts of a mixture of toxins known as trim at all and its possible
They may produce other toxins as well can.
on other animals that eat these plants can develop a condition called trembles, which is marked by trembling
fuel to eat, seizures and, ultimately, death. It's just
We believe that lactating animals are less affected by these toxins because they excrete them in their milk before they can do a lot of damage. But that means that there,
her young ingest, the toxins, as do any humans who drink the milk or eat butter or other foods made
Then there are also some reports of people and animals getting sick after eating the meat of an animal that died of trembles or were slaughtered after showing symptoms, but that is not is clearly documented in humans, milk sickness was known by a lot of different names and eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that included milk, thick slows, staggers swamp, sickness, river fever and six stomach. The condition is a form of ass, the doses and it causes tremors muscle, pain, weakness, loss of appetite, vomiting, constipation and eventually coma and death, so very like the symptom
of trembles, without a causes of person's breath to have a very distinctive acetone like odor. These same symptoms can also result from diabetic tito acidosis. So, especially before, insulin was isolated and used as a treatment for diabetes. Doctors could sometimes miss
I diabetes as milk, sick or vice versa, but unlike
diabetes, milk sickness often struck entire families or even whole communities all at once, because
everyone was getting milk for the same cows. Numbers are really impossible to verify at this point, but in some parts of the united states milk sickness was probably a leading cause of death in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sometimes milk sickness with such a recurring or traumatic issue in an area that places were named after it like milk, sick ridge and milk, sick cove, whole communities sometimes broke up and moved because it wasn't clear exactly what was going on, but something was killing people and livestock and there was no clear cause and no effective treatment,
At the same time, it took awhile for milk sickness to really get the attention of doctors and medical researchers. A big reason was that it just was not very common in more populated areas and especially not in major cities like cats,
was living at a dairy farm grazing and cultivated pastures? Are being fed, hay or silage, we're not likely to eat a bunch of snake route from the edge of a woodland if one of them did her? Milk was mixed in with the milk from a lot of.
cows before it was sold. So any toxin that it may have contained was diluted by the time the milk got to customers. So all that meant that people who were most likely to develop,
sickness were the ones living in more remote, less affluent areas, people whose cows had to forage whatever they could find and worked necessarily being kept in an enclosed, cultivated pasture milk sickness outbreaks tended to be worst in times of dryness or drought when other plants died and cows had to graves farther afield to get enough to eat. Although dairy cows, often sir,
I arrived after eating these plants because the toxins or coming out in their milk a lot of other livestock animals didn't so it wasn't unheard of for outbreaks of milk, sickness and trembled to strike at the same time, sick,
being and killing members of the family and the animals that were critical to their livelihood in the middle of a drought when food and why
there were already scarce.
This also means that milk sickness was a disease that was directly tied to the united states, westward expansion and the forced displacement of indigenous peoples from their ancestral homer
ends homesteaders and other new arrivals, tried to turn forest into farmlands and their grazing animals eight plants that they would not have encountered. Otherwise, in particular, milk sickness struck, most often in the mid west and the upper south. The first written reports of what may have been milk sickness date back to her before
for the revolutionary war in north carolina. Then in eighteen, no nine physician, Thomas barbie published a description of what sounds like milk, sickness and apiece called notes from Cincinnati, an anonymous eighteen, eleven report, references, barbie's peace and also the experiences of two people, Alexander Telford and arthur Stuart, both of whom lived in miami county ohio. According to this peace, Telford family had been too sick to milk, the cows, leaving the calves to drink the milk themselves. The calves, which had previously been healthy, all done
The family recovered and keeping the cows in a cultivated pasture seem to solve the problem. Both Telford an stewards, children had all
so immediately vomited after drinking milk and their subsequent illness had been less severe than their family members who had drunk the same milk but had not thrown it up. Telford horses had also died after he left them to feed in the woods, but the two horses he kept out of the woods were fine. The author of this peace also noted that dogs seem to be immune to this condition unless they ate the meat of an animal that died of it and also noted that, unlike most other epidemic, does
he's a milk thickness didn't seem to cause fever or chills. Based on all of these details, the writer concluded that the culprit was a plan that the cows were eating. The peace ended quote, should the present opinion be confirmed. The discovery may be regarded as one of considerable importance.
it will at least rob the disease of half its terrors and render it no longer a stumbling block to immigration. It will point out
by means of prevention and inspire a well grounded expectation of a total extinction of the malady in a few years. It would be an object of great curious
city and probably of utility, also to discover the plan which possesses such active qualities.
one of the modes in which this inquiry might be conducted is an examination of the contents of the stomachs of those animals which die suddenly. Should such a discovery be made. It is hoped that a specimen of the plan, with any information that may be collected concerning it, will be put into it
hands of a proper person that physicians and botanist generally may become acquainted with it. This peace with titled disease in ohio ascribe to some deleterious quality in milk of cows. It was printed in the medical repository which was the first medical journal to be published in the united states and, while the author didn't know which specific plant with causing this
isn't ing. Otherwise, this article was mostly correct. This apparently, though, did not spark a widespread effort to try to identify the plant that was causing this illness and we'll get to that after a sponsor break brought to you by the capital, one venture x card, when you book through capital, one travel using the venture x card, you earn ten x miles on hotels and rental cars and five
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so I dont know about you, but I have had several friends tell me recently that they were down pretty bad with covert nineteen. They were like I've ever gotten
Before and now I have it, then I'm thinking to myself after I don't hear from them for like two weeks, the cheese covered nineteen really is here to stay and all the new variance that, if popped out during this year itself, make it that much clearer. It's not all bad, though, since we are in a very different and much better place now versus the beginning of the pandemic, updated vaccines that help protect against some of the latest strains of covert. Nineteen are now available, just like with the flu regular protection against covert. Nineteen is an important part of our health routines and you can get both your flesh. I am covered. Nineteen shot at the same time. Now that is a real win win brought to you by Madonna vaccine may not be for everyone, please consult,
your doctor or pharmacist learn more advanced, seen stock of by the atm teens and twentys observers and journalists were reporting. Large outbreaks of illness and people are animals which are either specifically described as milk sickness or lined up with its symptoms. For example, in eighteen eighteen, a farmer named William fox described hundreds of cows being seconds by an unidentified herb that had been found rowing in their pasture near old vincent's and the anna seven of these cows died and fox commented on the need for a medical botanist, while fox was not the first or last person to connect this condition to a plant. Other people also pointed to a range of other possible causes, including my asthma or bad air, which were still
in blamed for causing illnesses before the development of the germ theory of disease, one of the most famous victims of milk sickness died in eighteen, eighteen, nancy, hanks, lincoln, mother of Abraham lincoln, who died on october. Fifth of that year,
there's some disagreement about this. Some sources conclude that she died of tobacco
who says, or some other condition, but Nancy Hanks lincoln, was one of
ro people in the area around pigeon creek indiana, who died around the same time. This is
Time cited as one of the reasons the lincoln family moved from Indiana two illinois and eighteen. Twenty three
Stephen Harriman long lead an expedition of the minutes,
a river and encountered several communities that had been stricken with an illness, including some deaths. The locals believed had been caused by milk four years later,
Thomas L, mckinney superintendent of indian affairs, tried to get melt for his camp on the mississippi river about eighteen miles, north of saint louis, he was told
people in that area stopped drinking milk. After a certain point in the spring, and also tried to wean there can
I was because, later in the year, something in the milk made people sick, edmund flags, far west
or a tour beyond the mountains chronicled his travel
in eighteen, thirty, six and eighteen thirty seven and had this to say, quote amiss
serious disease called the milk sickness because it was supposed to be communicated by that liquid was once alarmingly prevalent in certain isolated districts of illinois, whole villages were depopulated and though the mystery was often and thoroughly investigated. The
also the disease was never discovered by some. It was ascribed to the milk or to the flesh of cows, feeding upon a certain unknown poisonous plant found only in certain districts by others to certain springs of water or to the exhalations of
certain marshes. The mystery attending its operations and its terrible fatality at one period created a perfect panic in the settlers. Nor was this at all. Wonderful. The disease appears now to be vanishing. The idea that
sickness was vanishing in the eighteen. Thirties was optimistic, but it was around this time that some people might have identified the right plant and appears hobbs. Discovery was reportedly made in about eighteen. Thirty four will have more on that later and eighteen thirty, eight, a farmer named John row, published an article saying that white snakeroot was the cause of trembles. He had confirmed this by feeding some of it.
Calves and the calves had died, but then in eighteen, forty one Daniel drake, who was a really well known, doktor, who wrote a lad of influential medical works. He dismissed this conclusion. Basically, because row was a farmer and not a doktor and drakes words quote: a professional scrutiny only can be relied on. In such cases, drake actually agreed that a plant was the cause of milk sick.
But he thought the plan was poison. Ivy. The medical community didn't unanimously agree that a plant was involved in milk sickness though, and people were still suggesting various possible causes.
for example, also in eighteen, forty one j s seem published treatise on the key
also the disease called by the people, the milk sickness, as it occurs in the western in southern states, and that speculated that milk sickness was cause
by arsenic. There is some overlap in the symptoms of milk, sickness and arsenic poisoning, and seem believe that milk sickness was more
common during dry years, because the arsenic was a lot more concentrated in whatever water sources it had contaminated us makes more sense than a lot of things. People suggested besides,
as a doctor, F r, a waggoner also wrote on milk, sickness and eighteen. Fifty nine quote a certain species of vegetable, it not being known, abounds in the woodland and is matured by the later months of summer or first autumnal, at which season of the year the grass of the prairies becomes dry and tough when the cattle resort to the timber for sustenance, feeding upon it and as the cow Brut is very susceptible to it's tactical influence, often sicken and die, while others perhaps eating a less quantity past the season without ever showing signs of being poisoned by it from such careless and unsuspecting persons using from day to day the milk butter.
A flash of these animals often fall victims to the disease. Other observers, equally entitled to credence, contend that it is, as I intimated, of a tell yuruk origin rising from the earth in the form of a vapor or the nocturnal vapours being conducting mediums, depositing during the night on the urban than communicated.
In the former case is wagoner also noted that there wasn't much that can be done. Describing treatment for milk sickness. Ass quote one polyte the gastric
irritability, allay vomiting and nausea to evacuate the bowels three support: the patient and eighteen sixty seven
according to a report. In the Missouri Republican, a man named William jerry said that he had discovered the cause of milk sickness after eating a plant that had made him ill, including causing him to tremble violently. According to this report, he had planned to feed this same plant to cows, to see if it had the same.
Fact, with the hope of claiming a reward and that the legislature of Illinois had offered a few years previously illinois in kentucky, and possibly some other states offered rewards to anybody who could really prove what was causing milk sickness, not clear. If jerry ever did this experiment or two
to get the reward, though, as the germ theory of disease became more widely accepted later in the nineteenth century, some researchers concluded that milk sickness must
caused by a micro organisms
eventually in the nineteen twenties James F, couch of the: u s: d, a documented, the connection between milk, sickness and white snake root, including isolating toxins from the plant in nineteen. Twenty seven.
By this point, it was becoming more common formula to be pasteurized and couch confirmed that the heat of pastures-
Mission was not enough to neutralize the toxin that caused milk sickness in about nineteen. Thirty couch also found the same toxins in rayless goldenrod, although other people had made a connection between milk, sickness and white snakeroot decades before this was the first time there was clear analysis to back it up
the? U s, d, a started printing educational materials to inform farmers and ranchers of the dangers of these plants. Research also continued in the decades that followed with researchers establishing the toxins lethal dose and it's toxic mechanisms within the body
By this point, milk sickness really was on a decline less because people knew to keep livestock away from these plants and more because dairy cows were generally not is likely to be grazing outside of cultivated pastures. Even so, the last reported cases of milk sickness in the. U s were diagnosed in nineteen, sixty three to babies,
living near saint louis, had developed acidosis from an unknown cause and they were successfully treated with an intervening is by carbonate to lower the acidity in their blood. They had already recur
heard when an older doctor who had seen cases of milk sickness many years before made the connection it turned out that the baby's had been given milk from a farmer whose care
most had been freely grazing in an area where snakeroot was growing. Reports of animals dying from eating snakeroot continued up until at least the nineteen abies. So what about this doctor Anna? We all get to her after a sponsor break. This episode is brought to you by capital, when you don't need special gadgets to be a hero with unlimited one point: five percent cash back on every purchase everywhere, the cow
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So I dont know about you, but I have had several friends tell me recently that they were down pretty bad with covert nineteen. They were like I've ever got.
Before and now I have it and I'm thinking to myself after I don't hear from them for like two weeks that cheese covered nineteen really is here to stay and all the new variants that have popped out during this year itself make it that much clearer. It's not all bad, though, since we are in a very different and much better place now versus the beginning of the pandemic, updated vaccines that help protect against some of the latest strains of covert. Nineteen are now available, just like with the flu regular protection against cove and nineteen is an important part of our health routines and you can get both your flu shot and covert nineteen shot at the same time. Now that is a real win win brought to you by Madonna. The vaccine may not be for everyone. Please consult your doctor.
Pharmacist, learn more at vaccines, dot, gov yeah, pretty much
all the articles you'll see today about doktor Anna appears, hobbs bigs be often just called doktor anna hit the same basic points. They usually talk about how she was born. Anna pierce, somewhere in the eastern united states, may be filled
alpha and her family, later move to rock creek illinois before her first marriage, she decided to go back east to study medicine
philadelphia. But at that point medical education wasn't really accessible to women, the first woman to
and an m d in the united states was Elizabeth Blackwell, who we have covered on the show before in eighteen, forty nine. So, according to these articles, Anna pierce studied what she could reportedly taking courses and midwifery, dentistry and nursing. Although there aren't any written records of,
that makes doktor anna an honorary title, but if she really did have training it
we firmly and dentistry and nursing. She would have been at least as well trained as a lot of other people. Working as doctors in the eighteen birdies, if not more, the field of men
then was really not very standardized. Yet no,
to continue the recent article recap when pierce returned to rock creek shoe
The only person in the area who had formal medical training not long after returning she married Isaac hobbs. She started trying to figure out the cause of milk sickness. After her mother and sister in law died of it. She thought it might be caused by something the cows were eating that was showing up in their milk, so she started following them and collecting samples of what they grazed on fell. Those same points show up in a lot of
goals in the words of mrs sidney, snuck, heymann and history of harden county illinois written for this. Intentional, which was published in eighteen, thirty, nine quote according to her carefully kept diary, the source of the milks poisoning was finally discovered, after a strange fashion that strange
ashen was that hobbs met an indigenous woman in the woods who identified the plant for her, so this
Women's name is not recorded anywhere, but some articles explain her presence in the woods by saying she had been dispelled
east when the shawnee were removed from ohio following the treaty of wada, canada, which the shot
you living in ohio, were forced to sign on august eighth, eighteen thirty, one!
This treaty made it sound like this removal was the shawnees idea describing their quote perfect assent and quote willingness and anxiety to remove west of the mississippi river. That was blatantly untrue, though Heymann the cow and the history of harden county went on to say, quote: doktor hobbs took the what
and to her home and learned from her. The cause of the deadly milk plague. Aunt shaw:
as the indian woman became known in the community, went with doktor hobbs into the woods and showed her the herb the poisonous snakeroot, which they believed caused the cattle
these for many years after that, according to tradition, every fall the boys and men of the community armed with hose and knives troops through the forests to destroy the route it eradication stopped the plague, but not before it had ruined in large measure. One of the most promising of the counties pioneer industries
anna reportedly also kept a little patches snakeroot in her own yard, so that she could show other people what it looked like hobbs. His diary
pointedly said quote, I am convinced now that the poison, which kills the calves and people, saves the cows by being daily discharge through the milk way.
and so I am writing a few letters this morning and telling everyone I can to abstain wholly from milk and butter from june till after killing frosts, she went on to say quote: sheep and goats are careful in selecting their foods.
horses are what teachers call graminivorous, that is grass eaters
while cattle are herbivorous and not careful in selecting these things prove to us that it is not a grass, but it.
herb that is spreading, sorrow and death among us. So these elections that are purportedly from doktor anna's diary, which I read and multiple recent articles about her just, did not feel right to me.
Like goats reputation for eating anything up to and including tin cans is not really accurate, but the idea that they were so picky that they would not eat. Snakeroot just seem like an odd thing to say, especially considering today you can rent goats to eat unwanted plants like crazy. We ve talked about this in the show before horses also eat more than just grass, and there are a lot of historical reports of horses dying of trembles or milk sick, including thing
that were published in newspapers. The language just felt a little off to me and then, on top of all of that, while various sources quoted the same few passages. I just I couldn't find evidence of the diary itself anywhere doctor
in his work doesn't seem to have been reported in medical literature until nineteen sixty six when DR william D, snively, jr and louis and a furby published an article titled discoverer of the cause of milk sickness in the journal of the american medic
we'll association, overwhelmingly more recent articles on doktor anna traced back to this one, sometimes by citing other articles that cited it first. According to the footnotes, their source was called Anna's war against river pirates and cave bandits of John emeralds northern dive, unpublished, prose manuscript revised as ballads from the bluffs elizabethtown illinois published by the author nineteen forty eight,
that author was ella, a huh n hall, also called judge hall because he served as a judge. Her harden county illinois for reference, John a merle was an outlaw who lived from about eighteen, o six to eighteen, forty, four and his exploits were greatly embellished and sensationalize after his death, including in this book. This,
footnote also struck me as odd, among other things, why I would go so far as to say why, in the world
were they using an unpublished book, called anna's war against river pirates and cave bandit
of John emeralds northern dive as a reliable source of historical information in a jam on article
Tracy, could not find a scamp copy of ballads from the bluffs, but she did get a scam
amis war. Thanks to IRAN, licence research specialist at the special collections, research centre at morris library at southern illinois university
The title page of Anna's war describes it as a romantic story and its preface acknowledges that elements may seem superstitious or impossible. The illinois
historical society, published a review of its successor, ballads from the bluffs in nineteen forty eight, which describes that book. Ass quote adventure stories, romances and folklore dealing principally with characters and ozark bluff country of southern illinois. According to rear book sites that previously had copies for sale. The title page of ballads from the bluffs reads in part, quote a pre historic, an historic romance dealing with aboriginal in later races who lived in the ozark bluffs and mountains, and it is written down to the days of the bloody handed in which
river pirates and cave bandits fought by brave blue eyed anna sigh. So none of this suggests that either book should be uncritically read as any kind of straightforward fact, though, if you
banking way. Didn't ya'll read from the history of harden county illinois by mrs sidney
payment a few minutes ago. That seems like maybe a more definitive source than a book of adventure stories and romances. And yes, we did read from that earlier.
This is good. News came in with a member of the harden county, historical,
Mary and another historical committee, member was
ella you and haul author of arrows war against river pirates and ballads from the bluffs heymann was assigned to write that agriculture section of history of harden county, and that was not something that she knew anything about. She included the story of doktor anna based on information that hall gave to her and he gave her that information with the
express hope that it would be part of her right up. Ella hue and haul also lived in rock creek. He was born in eighteen, seventy, which was the year after doktor anna died, and he died in nineteen fifty seven. He claimed to have her journal and the journals of at least two of her relatives and to have heard stories about her from people in the area which he used to write. These books fell an appears, hobbs ass. She was in this story later, an up
it's hobbs bigsby was definitely a real person, among other things, she and her relatives and descendants show up in various census records. I think there are descendants living today, I'm so sorry. If I have offended you, it is likely that at least some of this story about her is true, like that she was a midwife and was really dedicated to helping her community. It is also possible that an indigenous woman told her about white snake route and that she took steps to try to eradicate it from around rock creek decades. Before the? U s d, a confirmed the car
as of milk sickness, but a lot of halls writing about doktor anna is incredibly dramatic. The
I know of anna's war against river pirates and cave bandits of john a murals. Northern dive kindest speaks for itself
for anna is written is a larger than life. Full cairo angel of the ozarks, a praying doctor and a teacher who worked miracles evading outlaws at some points in converting them to upstanding christians at others. There is a cave of,
treasure. There is a daring leap from a cliff to escape her murderous. Second husband, ace in bigs, be you she married in eighteen, forty, seven,
in this story. Bixby starts a fire to try to flush her out, but the fire is exceeded,
wished by very well. Timed storm basically
this manuscript, reads like a sensational novel and the milk sickness story is part of one of its thirty eight chapters. So I decided to do this episode because I was really free.
Traded by an article. I read recently that was titled how an eighteen hundreds midwife solved a poisonous mystery. This article acknowledges that, according to this story,
A shiny woman show doktor anna. What plant was causing milk sickness, but it still really makes sound like doktor. Anna was the one who solved the mystery, and this is not unique to this. One arm
it's why I didn't do this episode early around. There are a lot of pieces over the last few years that really give doktor anna the vast majority of the credit, while including this indigenous woman's knowledge. Almost as an aside, maybe doktor anna could have worked out the cause of milk sickness on her own without this woman's help. But while there was disagreement about the cause of milk, sickness people had been connecting it to plants, almost all the
back to its first descriptions in writing and according to this story, it was the woman known as aunt shawnee, not doktor anna, who made the connection to which specific plan. So I expected to be focused in this episode on the way this indeed
This woman's involvement has really been minimized and overlooked and erased, and so many articles I did not expect that. I would wind up questioning whether this entire account was genuine,
and we want to stress that it is completely understandable that people, especially
non historians have used this jama article as a source and taken its accuracy for granted or have taken for granted that
article, citing it are accurate
They peer reviewed medical journal. That's the kind of thing. We would normally point two and say that's a good sorts right, but once you start looking deeper into this, it really starts to unravel when I
trying to find the original manuscript. This story came from I emailed the special collections research centre at southern illinois university to ask if they really did have it, since some of my sources suggested that they did, but I couldn't find it in their online search tools. The first person who got back to me was university archivist matt gross ascii, who sent a pdf of some papers from the collection of historian John,
w Alan. This pdf included research compiled by a man named norman feral in nineteen. Sixty seven and this research echoed a whole lot of my questions about this manuscript and doktor anna and her diary, based on his own research, pharaoh, had concluded that there was no diary and have that hall had made it up over the course of ten exhibits. Barrels report presented a lot of
information, the calls halls account into question in one way or another, like the eighteen, eighty census noted whether people could read or write and according to their senses, records several of them.
Hobbs children and grandchildren and other relatives could not. I also found reference elsewhere too, in eighteen, sixty six legal document that described her as a midwife which she signed with an ax rather than signing her name, which would suggest that maybe she couldn't
you're right. So did she really have formal training in philadelphia? If she did doesn't it seem like she would have made sure her children learn to read. Pharaoh's exhibits also made the connection between halls were
can the passages on doktor anna that were included in history of harden county, including correspondence that which it made it clear that all wanted her to include that story. In her agriculture, section feral also pointed out, a number of factual discrepancies within halls account as well and traced. Multiple parallels between doktor, anna and doktor Elizabeth Blackwell, concluding that hall may actually have based his description of anna
on Blackwell. To be fair, though you could point out similar parallels to a number of other nineteenth century women. We have covered on the show, some examples of discrepancies between halls work and what we can substantiate about doktor anna from other sources,
whole makes it sound like she and her family came to the area from virginia when she was a team, but according to marriage and birth record, she was born in tennessee, got married there and had children before moving to illinois, as an adult hall also makes it sound like her. First husband died, the winter after the source of milk sickness was discovered, but Isaac hobbs seems to have died in eighteen. Forty five
hall claims that doctor Emma coined the word milk sick, but it had been in use for at least two decades before this could have happened and he describes her children
as school age, when her first husband died soon after his death, she kept herself busy teaching MA am, but according to various birth and death records, those children would have been between the ages of fourteen and twenty five.
In eighteen, forty five, that also circles back to that question and whether or not they were literate. Those are just a few examples.
and you may have noticed that some of these contradictions also contradict our description of recent articles on doktor anna from the beginning of this part of the epp,
on top of all of that introducing norman perils reports, was a letter written to history
brian lowell aid thereunder in nineteen, sixty seven recommending that this report be presented to readers
outdoor illinois, where therein share words this letter-
commanding that norman barrels work be published in outdoor illinois is by doktor, william snivelling junior co, author of
The journal of the american medical association article on doktor anna that had been published the year before in this letter, snivelling says: he's not ready to rule out his previously expressed conviction that an appears hobbs, discovered milk sickness, but quote there are so many assertions and halls writings that have proved to be false. That one is justified and looking with suspicion upon every thing he wrote in this letter. Snivelling also mentioned and effort to seek out descendants of Anna pierce hobbs to see
if anybody had any stories about her that did not come from reading the work of Ella hugh hall. I don't know what the results of those efforts were or what other correspondence they there may have been around this whole subject in the late nineteenth sixties. But there are just some really big question.
Denmark's here, and we should also take a moment to note that the idea that doctor amis search for the cause of milk sickness happened around eighteen, thirty, four making her the first to identify. It came from snivelling infer bees, night
Sixty six jama article in
I've always own words. That year is his contention based on the quoted diary passages and quote various contemporary events. That year isn't actually documented in primary
mrs making. The idea that doctor am, I was the first person to pinpoint the cause of milk sickness, even shakier, also snake.
Infer be published another article in jama in nineteen sixty nine about the research that went into their book. Satan's,
remain a true tale of the old frontier in which they specifically describe
amis war against river pirates as mixing fact and fancy with no indication of which is which making it not reliable as effectual source.
They don't really acknowledge their that they cited it as a factual source in a different article. Three years before also southern illinois historian,
John w Alan, whose papers this correspondence came from, wrote a column about doktor, anna and nineteen. Fifty seven that was reprinted in a book called. It happened in southern illinois in nineteen sixty eight. I had actually found that collection before getting in touch with the votes that southern illinois university like snow
ITALY and furby Allen draws from l a huh hall's work, but he uses a lot of language like story and legend and tradition tells us he doesn't specify a year or try to claim that doctor Anna was the first person to make the connection between milk, sickness and white snake rate, and he also ends by saying of all
a war around doktor anna quote, there is enough of the imaginary to create a supernatural ere. I feel this is the more appropriate way to discuss material that came from this book than to have a glowing article saying this is the person who definitively
scabbard, and just as one final note, if you happen to have white snake,
growing in your yard. You do not need to go pull it all up unless you have grazing animals that could eat it. Among other things,
in eastern north america. It is a native plant that blooms later than many other flower. So it's an important late season. Food source for bees and other pollinators just do not eat it or feed it to livestock.
It does spread it's seed. Similarly to dandelions, though so keep an eye on that, so you will have a lot more to say the behind the scenes. I think. Oh, do you have listener mail? In the meantime we do so.
If so, first, a quick note from Christie. In our unearthed part, one july, seventeenth episode, we talked about a carousel being restored by carousel works in mansfield ohio. I, and I could not remember who sent us that someone had sent us a letter previously talked to us about working, restore and carousels.
And I could not put my hands on that email and so in this. No Christie noted yes, indeed, that is where that person worked
the actually included their email in the saturday classic on carers, hills that we ran in january,
are you talking to you as soon as Christy's said this in this email eyes, like? Oh yeah? Obviously,
remember that now that was not the before
you may all. But I wanted to note that part. Thank you so much and thank you for a very adorable dog picture tool, dogs who are crying because they want to go for a walk there, so so fast that they are not yet on their walk, I mean
the way their tortured by the withholding of walk the withholding of what I also got a note from a wind who wrote to say hi, holly and tracy, while visiting
molly. In michigan we decided to go to green field. Village. Encase are not aware. The village is comprised of historical buildings and homes, Henry ford moved into one property and is now a museum
exploring the grounds we saw. Many connections to past episode, subjects from Henry ford himself in the rubber episodes to the Wright brothers in the history of flight to thomas edison. In the current worse, however,
The reason I am writing is that Noah Webster's house is on the grounds I massively recap the dictionary worse for my husband and even call
The interest of my daughter momentarily distracting her from the search for ice cream attached are pictures with my daughter in front of the house, Webster's library and a copy of his famous dictionary. I look forward to every episode and an additional benefit of being on vacation is knowing I'll have several episodes in the queue to catch up on thanks for all the years of entertainment, Linda. Thank you linda for this email and these pictures. I don't think I knew that Henry ford moved a bunch of historical homes to one bright.
Why that's fascinating? I definitely did not know that there was a Noah Webster house in Michigan, because
There is also a Noah Webster house, which is his birth place in connecticut yeah. So it's like this is the house that he lived in later on and wrote the dictionary an the connecticut one is the one he was born in. So thank you. So much linda, if you would like to write to us about this
there any other podcast write history, podcast that I heard radio dot com and we're all over social media at missed in history. I keep saying that, but now there is more so
media than there were before
and we're not on any of the new ones. Yet so you can still find us at facebook. Dot com, slash missed in history, and I guess on the website formerly known as twitter, and you can send us an email if you like it history podcast,
her radio dog stuff. You must, in history class the production of iheart radio for more podcast,
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Transcript generated on 2023-11-24.