October 11, 1998: 19 years ago today

​Nancy Hanks Lincoln (mother of Abraham Lincoln) died on Oct. 5, 1818 from “milk sickness.”  Milk sickness is caused by poisoning after drinking milk from cows that have eaten the plant white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima).  Also known as “puking fever” or simply “the trembles,” early European-American settlers in the Midwest initially thought milk sickness was an infectious disease.  It was soon realized that the unidentified illnesses were caused by drinking milk from cows that ate white snakeroot, which contains the chemical tremetol, a toxin which causes weakness, pain, vomiting, abdominal pain, and can lead to coma and death.  The cattle of these early settlers often wandered into the forest to graze, seeking additional forage outside limited pastures.  However, milk sickness is very uncommon today due to modern farming practices and cows rarely have access to eat this plant.
 
White snakeroot is a fall blooming, shade-tolerant species found in forests across the Eastern US, and commonly found throughout southwestern PA.  This specimen pictured was collected in 1998 in southwestern Indiana, about 90 miles north of the Little Pigeon Creek Community, where Abraham Lincoln’s family lived.

 white snakeroot at Trillium Trail, Fox Chapel Borough, PA (Allegheny Co.); Sept. 19, 2016