Milk Sickness and the Mystery of Dr. Anna

<p>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?</p> <p><strong>Research:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Allen, John W. “It Happened in Southern Illinois: The Legend of Dr. Anna Bigsby.” The Daily Register. Harrisburg, IL. 1957.</li> <li>Allen, John W. “It Happened in Southern Illinois.” Southern Illinois University. 1968.</li> <li>“Disease in Ohio, Ascribed to Some Deleterious Quality in Milk of Cows.” The Medical Repository May-July 1811: Vol 3. </li> <li>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</li> <li>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</li> <li>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.</li> <li>Hardin County (Ill.). Historical Committee for the Centennial. “History of Hardin County, Illinois.” 1939. <strong></strong>https://archive.org/details/historyofhardinc00hard<strong> </strong></li> <li>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.</li> <li>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.</li> <li>“Lowell A. Dearinger.” https://www.choisser.org/illinois/lowell.html</li> <li>McCarthy, Will. “How an 1800s Midwife Solved a Poisonous Mystery.” Smithsonian. July/August 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-1800s-midwife-solved-poisionous-myster