Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

418 CATTLE:
from the healthy article. A very minute quantity of either will
suffice to develope the disease in man. The cream, ordinarily sufficient
to be added to the coffee drank at a single meal, is said to have
induced an attack. The butter or cheese eaten at one repast has frequently
been known to prove effective. The property is not con-
tained in any of the elements of the milk exclusively, but distributed"
throughout the whole of them, being possessed by the butter-milk as
well as the whey. Beef, in the quantity of a few ounces, will produce
the disease, and it is believed in a more violent and fatal form than
when it is produced by milk or any of its preparations.
The effect of the poison is manifested throughout the entire
system, and vitiates all the secretions. An experiment, which went
far to prove how deeply the milk of other animals is imbued with -its
poison, was made by administering the infected meat to a bitch suckling
five puppies. The effect produced in them was very sudden,
and the entire litter died in four days, which was two days before the
occurrence of the death of the mother.
The subtle, poisonous principle, of whatever it may be proved to
consist, seems to possess the power of infinite reproduction, by some
vital or chemico-vital action of the system of those animals poisoned
by its influence. Thus, supposing one pound of flesh to prove suffi-
cient to produce the death of another animal, it will be found that
each pound of flesh of that animal so destroyed, will possess as active
powers of destruction, and will, in its turn, serve to contaminate the
whole body of another animal in the same degree.
Dr. J. B. Johnston, of Indiana, says : " I never knew the disease to
prevail where there was not a free growth of weeds. I well know
that it is circumscribed, that a small section will produce the disease,
then an exemption for some distance, when it will again recur. So
of some farms ; a portion will produce it, and the other will not. In
fact, there is not a county from Floyd to the mouth of the Wabash,
and as far north as White River, that is exempt from milk sickness
and it often occurs in both Southern Illinois and Kentucky. I have
never heard of it above the- 4 1st degree of north latitude, and it
seldom reaches that line. My firm convictions are, that the disease
termed milk sickness is produced by the rhus toxicodendron, or poison
oak, and that it is a separate and distinct species from the radicans,
or poison vine. It is further stated that the poison oak never vines—
that it is never seen to take hold on trees, and that it grows from one
to three feet in height ; that it has three, while the radicans or poison
vine has five leaves."
Dr. Mcllhenny, of Ohio, who has paid much attention to this dis-
" On the cause of milk sickness, we must be allowed to
ease, says :
express our decided conviction, that it is produced by the rhus toxicodendron,
or poison oak, for the following reasons :
1. Milk sickness does not prevail where there is no rhus—that in
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