Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. A while ago, long enough
Speaker 1: that I cannot find the message now, in spite of
Speaker 1: a lot of looking, we got a request to do
Speaker 1: an episode on someone called doctor Anna, and after a
Speaker 1: little bit of digging, I pieced together that the person
Speaker 1: being a referenced was Anna Pierce Hobbs Bigsby, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes misspelled as Bixby with an X. She is often
Speaker 1: credited with discovering the cause of milk sickness, but then
Speaker 1: her discovery was totally overlooked by the medical community. She
Speaker 1: came back to my attention recently after I read an
Speaker 1: article on this that I found really frustrating, and we
Speaker 1: will get to why I found it frustrating, But basically
Speaker 1: I got real fired up about it, and I moved
Speaker 1: her up to the top of the list. And then
Speaker 1: during research I found a whole other layer of stuff
Speaker 1: to be frustrated about, and we will get to that too.
Speaker 1: So today this episode is divided roughly into three acts. First,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what milk sickness was, since most people
Speaker 1: are not likely to have had any experience with it today.
Speaker 1: Then we'll take a look at how the medical understanding
Speaker 1: of milk sickness progressed through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Speaker 1: and then we'll finish with a look at this woman
Speaker 1: who became known as doctor Anna, and that part is
Speaker 1: going to go in a somewhat different direction from most
Speaker 1: of our episodes. There are a lot of illnesses that
Speaker 1: can be transmitted through milk, especially unpasteurized milk. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: we talked about outbreaks of scarlet fever that were connected
Speaker 1: to milk. In the nineteenth century and prior to the
Speaker 1: widespread use of pasturization, people contracted diseases like typhoid, diphtheria,
Speaker 1: bovine tuberculosis, and various gastruintestinal illnesses all from milk. But
Speaker 1: milk sickness doesn't come from a microorganism. It is a
Speaker 1: type of poisoning. At least two different plants are believed
Speaker 1: to cause this type of poisoning. One is white snake root,
Speaker 1: which is also called rich weed and some older texts.
Speaker 1: This is a perennial plant that grows to about five
Speaker 1: feet or one and a half meters tall. It blooms
Speaker 1: in the late summer and into the fall with clusters
Speaker 1: of fluffy white flowers. This plant is native to the
Speaker 1: eastern half of North America, like all the way to
Speaker 1: Texas is on the far western end. It likes the shade,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the time it's found along the
Speaker 1: edges of woodlands. The other plant is rayless golden rod,
Speaker 1: and that's native to parts of the southwest United States.
Speaker 1: This is another perennial. It produces bright yellow flowers, and
Speaker 1: it also grows to a height of roughly five feet.
Speaker 1: Each of these plants can contain varying amounts of a
Speaker 1: mixture of toxins known as trematol, and it's possible that
Speaker 1: they may produce other toxins as well. Cattle and other
Speaker 1: animals that eat these plants can develop a condition called trembles,
Speaker 1: which is marked by trembling, refusal to eat, seizures, and
Speaker 1: ultimately death. It's generally believed that lactating animals are less
Speaker 1: affected by these toxins because they excrete them in their
Speaker 1: milk before they can do a lot of damage, but
Speaker 1: that means that they're nursing young in just the toxins,
Speaker 1: as do any humans who drink the milk or eat
Speaker 1: butter or other foods made from it. There are also
Speaker 1: some reports of people and animals getting sick after eating
Speaker 1: the meat of an animal that died of trembles or
Speaker 1: was slaughtered after showing symptoms, but that is not as
Speaker 1: clearly documented in humans. Milk sickness was known by a
Speaker 1: lot of different names in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Speaker 1: that included milk sick sloughs staggers, swamp sickness, river fever,
Speaker 1: and six stomach. The condition is a form of acidosis,
Speaker 1: and it causes tremors, muscle pain, weakness, loss of appetite, vomiting, constipation,
Speaker 1: and eventually coma and death. So very like the symptoms
Speaker 1: of trembles, this also causes a person's breath to have
Speaker 1: a very distinctive actone like odor. These same symptoms can
Speaker 1: also result from diabetic ketoacidosis, so, especially before insulin was
Speaker 1: isolated and used as a treatment for diabetes, doctors could
Speaker 1: sometimes misdiagnose diabetes as milk sick or vice versa. But
Speaker 1: unlike diabetes, milk sickness often struck entire families or even
Speaker 1: whole communities all at once because everyone was getting milk
Speaker 1: from the same cows. Numbers are really impossible to verify
Speaker 1: at this point, but in some parts of the United States,
Speaker 1: milk sickness was probably a leading cause of death in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Sometimes milksickness was such a
Speaker 1: recurring or traumatic issue in an area that places were
Speaker 1: named after it, like Milksick Ridge and milk sick Cove.
Speaker 1: Whole communities sometimes broke up and moved because it wasn't
Speaker 1: clear exactly what was going on, but something was killing
Speaker 1: people and livestock, and there was no clear cause and
Speaker 1: no effective treatment. At the same time, it took a
Speaker 1: while for milksickness to really get the attention of doctors
Speaker 1: and medical researchers. A big reason was that it just
Speaker 1: was not very common in more populated areas, and especially
Speaker 1: not in major cities. Like cows living at a dairy farm,
Speaker 1: grazing and cultivated pastures, or being fed hey or silage
Speaker 1: were not likely to eat a bunch of snake root
Speaker 1: from the edge of a woodland. If one of them did,
Speaker 1: her milk was mixed in with the milk from a
Speaker 1: lot of other cows. Before it was sold, so any
Speaker 1: toxin that it may have contained was diluted by the
Speaker 1: time the milk got to customers. So all that meant
Speaker 1: the people who were most likely to develop milk sickness
Speaker 1: were the ones living in more remote, less affluent areas,
Speaker 1: people whose cows had to forage whatever they could find
Speaker 1: and weren't necessarily being kept in an enclosed, cultivated pasture.
Speaker 1: Milk sickness outbreaks tended to be worst in times of
Speaker 1: dryness or drought, when other plants died and cows had
Speaker 1: to graze farther afield to get enough to eat. Although
Speaker 1: dairy cows often survived after eating these plants because the
Speaker 1: toxins were coming out in their milk, a lot of
Speaker 1: other livestock animals didn't, so it wasn't unheard of for
Speaker 1: outbreaks of milk sickness and trembles to strike at the
Speaker 1: same time, sickening and killing members of the family and
Speaker 1: the animals that were critical to their livelihood in the
Speaker 1: middle of a drought when food and water were already scarce.
Speaker 1: This also means that milk sickness was a disease that
Speaker 1: was directly tied to the United's state's westward expansion and
Speaker 1: the forced displacement of indigenous peoples from their ancestral homelands.
Speaker 1: Homesteaders and other new arrivals tried to turn forest into farmlands,
Speaker 1: and their grazing animals eight plants that they would not
Speaker 1: have encountered otherwise. In particular, milk sickness struck most often
Speaker 1: in the Midwest and the Upper South. The first written
Speaker 1: reports of what may have been milk sickness date back
Speaker 1: to before the Revolutionary War in North Carolina. Then, in
Speaker 1: eighteen o nine, physician Thomas Barbie published a description of
Speaker 1: what sounds like milk sickness and a piece called Notes
Speaker 1: from Cincinnati. An anonymous eighteen eleven report references Barbie's piece
Speaker 1: and also the experiences of two people, Alexander Telford and
Speaker 1: Arthur Stewart, both of whom lived in Miami County, Ohio.
Speaker 1: According to this piece, Telford's family had been too sick
Speaker 1: to milk the cows, leaving the calves to drink the
Speaker 1: milk themselves. The calves, which had previously been healthy, all died.
Speaker 1: The family recovered, and keeping the cows in a cultivated
Speaker 1: pasture seemed to solve the problem. Both Telford and Stuart's
Speaker 1: children had also immediately vomited after drinking the milk, and
Speaker 1: their subsequent illness had been less severe than their family members,
Speaker 1: who had drunk the same milk but had not thrown
Speaker 1: it up. Telford's horses had also died after he left
Speaker 1: them to feed in the woods, but the two horses
Speaker 1: he kept out of the woods were fine. The author
Speaker 1: of this piece also noted that dogs seemed to be
Speaker 1: immune to this condition unless they ate the meat of
Speaker 1: an animal that died of it, and also noted that,
Speaker 1: unlike most other epidemic diseases, milk sickness didn't seem to
Speaker 1: cause fever or chills. Based on all of these details,
Speaker 1: the writer concluded that the culprit was a plant that
Speaker 1: the cows were eating. The piece ended quote, Should the
Speaker 1: present opinion be confirmed, the discovery may be regarded as
Speaker 1: one considerable importance. It will at least rob the disease
Speaker 1: of half its terrors and render it no longer a
Speaker 1: stumbling block to emigration. It will point out a certain
Speaker 1: means of prevention and inspire a well grounded expectation of
Speaker 1: a total extinction of the malady in a few years.
Speaker 1: It would be an object of great curiosity and probably
Speaker 1: of utility also to discover the plant which possesses such
Speaker 1: active qualities. One of the modes in which this inquiry
Speaker 1: might be conducted is an examination of the contents of
Speaker 1: the stomachs of those animals which die suddenly. Should such
Speaker 1: a discovery be made, it is hoped that a specimen
Speaker 1: of the plant, with any information that may be collected
Speaker 1: concerning it, will be put into the hands of a
Speaker 1: proper person that physicians and botanists generally may become acquainted
Speaker 1: with it. This piece was titled Disease in Ohio, ascribed
Speaker 1: to some deleterious quality in milk of cows. It was
Speaker 1: printed in the Medical Repository, which was the first medical
Speaker 1: journal to be published in the United States. And while
Speaker 1: the author didn't know which specific plant was causing this poisoning,
Speaker 1: otherwise this article was mostly correct. This apparently, though, did
Speaker 1: not spark a wide spread effort to try to identify
Speaker 1: the plant that was causing this illness, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to that after a sponsor break. By the eighteen teens
Speaker 1: and twenties, observers and journalists were reporting large outbreaks of
Speaker 1: illness in people or animals which are either specifically described
Speaker 1: as milk sickness or lined up with its symptoms. For example,
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen, a farmer named William Fox described hundreds
Speaker 1: of cows being sickened by an unidentified herb that had
Speaker 1: been found growing in their pasture near Old Vincen's, Indiana.
Speaker 1: Seven of these cows died, and Fox commented on the
Speaker 1: need for a medical botanist. While Fox was not the
Speaker 1: first or last person to connect this condition to a plant,
Speaker 1: other people also pointed to a range of other possible causes,
Speaker 1: including miasmas or bad air, which were still being blamed
Speaker 1: for causing illnesses before the development of the germ theory
Speaker 1: of disease. One of the most famous victims of milk
Speaker 1: sickness died in eighteen eighteen Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln, who died on October fifth of that year.
Speaker 1: There's some disagreement about this. Some sources conclude that she
Speaker 1: died of tuberculosis or some other condition, but Nancy Hanks
Speaker 1: Lincoln was one of several people in the area around
Speaker 1: Pigeon Creek, Indiana, who died around the same time. This
Speaker 1: is sometimes cited as one of the reasons the Lincoln
Speaker 1: family moved from Indiana to Illinois. In eighteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: Stephen Harriman Long led an expedition up the Minnesota River
Speaker 1: and encountered several communities that had been stricken with an illness,
Speaker 1: including some deaths that locals believed had been caused by milk.
Speaker 1: Four years later, Thomas L. McKinny, Superintendent of Indian Affairs,
Speaker 1: tried to get milk for his camp on the Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: about eighteen miles north of Saint Louis. He was told
Speaker 1: that people in that area stopped drinking milk after a
Speaker 1: certain point in the spring, and also tried to wean
Speaker 1: their calves because later in the year something in the
Speaker 1: milk made people sick Edmund Flaggs, Far West or a
Speaker 1: tour beyond the Mountains, chronicled his travels in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: six and eighteen thirty seven and had this to say,
Speaker 1: quote A mysterious disease called the milk sickness, because it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be communicated by that liquid, was once
Speaker 1: alarmingly prevalent in certain isolated districts of Illinois. Whole villages
Speaker 1: were depopulated, and though the mystery was often and thoroughly investigated.
Speaker 1: The cause of the disease was never discovered. By some.
Speaker 1: It was ascribed to the milk, or to the flesh
Speaker 1: of cows feeding upon a certain unknown poisonous plant found
Speaker 1: only in certain districts, by others, to certain springs of water,
Speaker 1: or to the exhalations of certain marshes. The mystery attending
Speaker 1: its operations and its terrible fatality at one period created
Speaker 1: a perfect panic in the settlers. Nor was this at
Speaker 1: all wonderful. The disease appears now to be vanishing. The
Speaker 1: idea that milk sickness was vanishing in the eighteen thirties
Speaker 1: was optimistic, But it was around this time that some
Speaker 1: people might have identified the right plant, and Appierce Hobb's
Speaker 1: discovery was reportedly made in about eighteen thirty four. Will
Speaker 1: have more on that later. And eighteen thirty eight a
Speaker 1: farmer named John Rowe published an article saying that white
Speaker 1: snake root was the cause of trambles. He had confirmed
Speaker 1: this by feeding some of it to calves, and the
Speaker 1: calves had died. But then in eighteen forty one, Daniel Drake,
Speaker 1: who was a really well known doctor who wrote a
Speaker 1: lot of influential medical works. He dismissed this conclusion basically
Speaker 1: because Roe was a farmer and not a doctor, and
Speaker 1: Drake's words quote a professional scrutiny only can be relied
Speaker 1: on in such cases. Drake actually agreed that a plant
Speaker 1: was the cause of milk sickness, but he thought the
Speaker 1: plant was poison ivy. The medical community didn't unanimously agree
Speaker 1: that a plant was involved in milk sickness, though, and
Speaker 1: people were still suggesting various possible causes. For example, also
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty one, J. S. Seton published treatise on
Speaker 1: the Cause of the disease called by the people the
Speaker 1: milk sickness as it occurs in the Western and Southern States,
Speaker 1: and that speculated that milksickness was caused by arsenic There
Speaker 1: is some overlap in the symptoms of milk sickness and
Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning, and Setan believed that milksickness was more common
Speaker 1: during dry years because the arsenic was a lot more
Speaker 1: concentrated in whatever water sources it had contaminated. This makes
Speaker 1: more sense than a lot of the things people suggested
Speaker 1: besides plants. Doctor F. R. Wagoner also wrote on milk
Speaker 1: sickness in eighteen fifty nine quote a certain species of vegetable,
Speaker 1: it not being known, abounds in the woodland and is
Speaker 1: matured by the later months of summer or first autumnal
Speaker 1: at which season of the year the grass of the
Speaker 1: prairies becomes dry and tough, when the cattle resort to
Speaker 1: the timber for sustenance, feeding upon it, and as the
Speaker 1: cow broot is very susceptible to its toxical influence, often
Speaker 1: sicken and die, while others, perhaps eating a less quantity
Speaker 1: past the season without ever showing signs of being poisoned
Speaker 1: by it. From such careless and unsuspecting persons using from
Speaker 1: day to day the milk, butter, and flesh of these
Speaker 1: animals often fall victims to the disease. Other observers, equally
Speaker 1: entitled to Creden's contend that it is as I intimated,
Speaker 1: of a telluric origin rising from the earth in the
Speaker 1: form of a vapor, or the nocturnal vapors being conducting
Speaker 1: mediums depositing during the night on the herbage, then communicated
Speaker 1: as in the former cases. Wagoner also noted that there
Speaker 1: wasn't much that could be done describing treatment for milk
Speaker 1: sickness as quote. One palliate the gastric irritability, a lay
Speaker 1: vomiting and nausea. Two evacuate the bowels. Three support the patient.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty seven, according to a report in the
Speaker 1: Missouri Republican, a man named William Jerry said that he
Speaker 1: had discovered the cause of milk sickness after eating a
Speaker 1: plant that had made him ill, including causing him to
Speaker 1: tremble violently. According to this report, he had planned to
Speaker 1: feed this same plant to cows to see if it
Speaker 1: had the same effect, with the hope of claiming a
Speaker 1: reward that the legislature of Illinois had offered a few
Speaker 1: years pre Obviously, Illinois and Kentucky and possibly some other
Speaker 1: states offered rewards to anybody who could really prove what
Speaker 1: was causing milk sickness. Not clear if Jerry ever did
Speaker 1: this experiment or tried to get the reward, though. As
Speaker 1: the germ theory of disease became more widely accepted later
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, some researchers concluded that milk sickness
Speaker 1: must be caused by a microorganism, but eventually, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, James F. Couch of the USDA documented the
Speaker 1: connection between milk sickness and white snake root, including isolating
Speaker 1: toxins from the plant, in nineteen twenty seven. By this point,
Speaker 1: it was becoming more common for milk to be pasteurized,
Speaker 1: and Couch confirmed that the heat of pasteurization was not
Speaker 1: enough to neutralize the toxin that caused milk sickness. In
Speaker 1: about nineteen thirty, Couch also found the same toxins in
Speaker 1: Raylis goldenrod. Although other people had made a connection between
Speaker 1: milk's sickness and white snakeery decades before, this was the
Speaker 1: first time there was clear analysis to back it up.
Speaker 1: The USDA started printing educational materials to inform farmers and
Speaker 1: ranchers of the dangers of these plants. Research also continued
Speaker 1: in the decades that followed, with researchers establishing the toxins,
Speaker 1: lethal dose, and its toxic mechanisms within the body. By
Speaker 1: this point, milksickness really was on a decline, less because
Speaker 1: people knew to keep livestock away from these plants, and
Speaker 1: more because dairy cows were generally not as likely to
Speaker 1: be grazing outside of cultivated pastures. Even so, the last
Speaker 1: reported cases of milk sickness in the US were diagnosed.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, two babies living near Saint Louis
Speaker 1: had developed acidosis from an unknown cause, and they were
Speaker 1: successfully treated with an intravenius by carbonate to lower the
Speaker 1: acidity in their blood. They had already recovered when an
Speaker 1: older dog who had seen cases of milk sickness many
Speaker 1: years before, made the connection. It turned out that the
Speaker 1: babies had been given milk from a farmer whose cows
Speaker 1: had been freely grazing in an area where snake root
Speaker 1: was growing. Reports of animals dying from eating snakeroot continued
Speaker 1: up until at least the nineteen eighties. So what about
Speaker 1: this doctor Anna. We will get to her after a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. Pretty much all the articles you'll see today
Speaker 1: about doctor Anna Pierce Hobbs Bigsby, often just called doctor Anna,
Speaker 1: hit the same basic points. They usually talk about. How
Speaker 1: she was born Anna Pierce somewhere in the eastern United States,
Speaker 1: maybe Philadelphia, and her family later moved to Rock Creek, Illinois.
Speaker 1: Before her first marriage, she decided to go back east
Speaker 1: to study medicine in Philadelphia, but at that point medical
Speaker 1: education wasn't really accessible to women. The first woman to
Speaker 1: earn an MD in the United States was Elizabeth Blackwell,
Speaker 1: who we have covered on the show before in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. So, according to these articles, Anna Pierce studied
Speaker 1: what she could, reportedly taking courses in midwhiffery, dentistry, and nursing.
Speaker 1: Although there aren't any written records of this. That makes
Speaker 1: doctor Anna an honorary title. But if she really did
Speaker 1: have training in midwhiffery and dentistry and nursing, she would
Speaker 1: have been at least as well trained as a lot
Speaker 1: of other people working as doctors in the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: if not more. The field of medicine was really not
Speaker 1: very standardized yet no u to continue the recent article recamp.
Speaker 1: When Pierce returned to Rock Creek, she was the only
Speaker 1: person in the area who had formal medical training. Not
Speaker 1: long after returning, she married Isaac Hobbs. She started trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the cause of milk sickness after her
Speaker 1: mother and sister in law died of it. She thought
Speaker 1: it might be caused by something the cows were eating
Speaker 1: that was showing up in their milk, so she started
Speaker 1: following them and collecting samples of what they grazed on.
Speaker 1: So those same points show up in a lot of articles.
Speaker 1: In the words of missus Sidney Snook Hayman in History
Speaker 1: of Hardin County, Illinois, written for the Centennial, which was
Speaker 1: published in eighteen thirty nine. Quote, according to her carefully
Speaker 1: kept diary, the source of the milks poisoning was finally
Speaker 1: discovered after a strange fashion. That strange fashion was that
Speaker 1: Hobbes met an indigenous woman in the woods who identified
Speaker 1: the plant for her. So this woman's name is not
Speaker 1: recorded anywhere, but some articles explain her presence in the
Speaker 1: woods by saying she had been displaced when the Shawnee
Speaker 1: were removed from Ohio following the Treaty of Wapacinetta, which
Speaker 1: the Shawnee living in Ohio were forced to sign on
Speaker 1: August eighth, eighteen thirty one. This treaty made it sound
Speaker 1: like this removal was the Shawneese idea, describing their quote
Speaker 1: perfect ascent and quote willingness and anxiety to remove west
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi River. That was blatantly untrue. So Hayman's
Speaker 1: account in the History of Hardin County went on to say,
Speaker 1: quote doctor Hobbs took the woman into her home and
Speaker 1: learned from her the cause of the deadly milk plague.
Speaker 1: Aunt Shawnee, as the Indian woman became known in the community,
Speaker 1: went with doctor Hobbs into the woods and showed her
Speaker 1: the herb, the poisonous snake root, which they believed caused
Speaker 1: the cattle disease. For many years after that, according to tradition,
Speaker 1: every fall, the boys and men of the community, armed
Speaker 1: with hoes and knives, trooped through the forests to destroy
Speaker 1: the route. It's eradication stopped the plague, but not before
Speaker 1: it had ruined, in large measure, one of the most
Speaker 1: promising of the county's pioneer industries. Doctor Anna reportedly also
Speaker 1: kept a little patch of snake root in her own
Speaker 1: yard so that she could show other people what it
Speaker 1: looked like. Hobbs's diary reportedly said, quote, I am convinced
Speaker 1: now that the poison which kills the calves and people
Speaker 1: saves the cows by being daily discharged through the milk glands.
Speaker 1: So I am writing a few letters this morning and
Speaker 1: telling everyone I can to abstain wholly from milk and
Speaker 1: butter from June till after killing frosts. She went on
Speaker 1: to say, quote, sheep and goats are careful in selecting
Speaker 1: their foods, and horses are what teachers call graminivorous, that is,
Speaker 1: grass eaters, while cattle are herbivorous and not careful in selecting.
Speaker 1: These things prove to us that it is not a
Speaker 1: grass but an herb that is spreading sorrow and death
Speaker 1: among us. So these selections that are purportedly from doctor
Speaker 1: Anna's diary, which I read in multiple recent articles about her,
Speaker 1: just did not feel right to me. Like goats reputation
Speaker 1: for eating anything up to and including ten cans is
Speaker 1: not really accurate, but the idea that they were so
Speaker 1: picky that they would not eat snake root just seem
Speaker 1: like an odd thing to say, especially considering today you
Speaker 1: can rent goats to eat unwanted plants like kudzu. We've
Speaker 1: talked about this in the show before. Horses also eat
Speaker 1: more than just grass, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: historical reports of horses dying of trembles or milk sick,
Speaker 1: including things that were published in newspapers. The language just
Speaker 1: felt a little off to me. And then, on top
Speaker 1: of all of that, while various sources quoted the same
Speaker 1: few passages, I just I couldn't find evidence of the
Speaker 1: diary itself anywhere. Doctor Anna's work doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: been reported in medical literature until nineteen sixty six, when
Speaker 1: doctor William D. Schneidley Junior and Luenna ferbeyublished an article
Speaker 1: titled Discoverer of the Cause of Milk Sickness in the
Speaker 1: Journal of the American Medical Association. Overwhelmingly more recent articles
Speaker 1: on doctor Anna trace back to this one, sometimes by
Speaker 1: citing other articles that cited it first. According to the footnotes,
Speaker 1: their source was called Anna's War against River Pirates and
Speaker 1: Cave Bandits of John A. Merle's Northern Dive, unpublished prose
Speaker 1: manuscript revised as Ballads from the Bluffs, Elizabethtown, Illinois, published
Speaker 1: by the author nineteen forty eight. That author was Elihu N. Hall,
Speaker 1: also called Judge Hall because he served as a judge
Speaker 1: for Hardin County, Illinois. For reference, John A. Merle was
Speaker 1: an outlaw who lived from about eighteen oh six to
Speaker 1: eighteen forty four, and his exploits were greatly embellished and
Speaker 1: sensationalized after his death, including in this book. This footnote
Speaker 1: also struck me as odd, among other things, why I
Speaker 1: would go so far as to say why in the
Speaker 1: world were they using an unpublished book called Anna's War
Speaker 1: against River Pirates and Cave Bandits of John A. Merle's
Speaker 1: Northern Dive as the reliable source of historical information in
Speaker 1: a JAMA article. Tracy could not find a scanned copy
Speaker 1: of Ballads from the Bluffs, but she did get a
Speaker 1: scan of Anna's War thanks to Aaron Lysac, research specialist
Speaker 1: at the Special Collections Research Center at Morris Library at
Speaker 1: Southern Illinois University. The title page of Anna's War describes
Speaker 1: it as a romantic story, and its preface acknowledges that
Speaker 1: elements may seem superstitious or impossible. The Illinois State Historical
Speaker 1: Society published a review of its successor, Ballads from the
Speaker 1: Bluffs in nineteen forty eight, which describes that book as
Speaker 1: quote adventure stories, romances, and folklore dealing principally with characters
Speaker 1: in Ozark Bluff country of southern Illinois. According to rare
Speaker 1: book sites that previously had copies for sale, the title
Speaker 1: page of Ballads from the Bluffs reads, in part quote
Speaker 1: a prehistoric and historic romance dealing with Aboriginal in later
Speaker 1: races who lived in the Ozark Bluffs and mountains and
Speaker 1: it is written down to the days of the bloody
Speaker 1: handed and wicked river pirates and cave bandits fought by brave,
Speaker 1: blue eyed Anna Si. So none of this suggests that
Speaker 1: either book should be uncritically read as any kind of
Speaker 1: straightforward fact. So if you're thinking, way, didn't y'all read
Speaker 1: from the History of Harden County, Illinois by Missus Sidney
Speaker 1: Snook Hayman a few minutes ago? That seems like maybe
Speaker 1: a more definitive source than a book of adventure stories
Speaker 1: and romances, And yes, we did read from that earlier.
Speaker 1: Missus Sidney Snook Hayman was a member of the Harden
Speaker 1: count Historical Committee, and another historical committee member was Elihu
Speaker 1: En Hall, author of Anna's Boar Against River Pirates and
Speaker 1: Ballads from the Bluffs. Hayman was assigned to write the
Speaker 1: agriculture section of history of Hardin County, and that was
Speaker 1: not something that she knew anything about. She included the
Speaker 1: story of doctor Anna based on information that Hall gave
Speaker 1: to her, and he gave her that information with the
Speaker 1: express hope that it would be part of her write up.
Speaker 1: Elihu N. Hall also lived in Rock Creek. He was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventy, which was the year after doctor
Speaker 1: Anna died, and he died in nineteen fifty seven. He
Speaker 1: claimed to have her journal and the journals of at
Speaker 1: least two of her relatives, and to have heard stories
Speaker 1: about her from people in the area, which he used
Speaker 1: to write these books. So Anna Pierce Hobbes as she
Speaker 1: was in this story later, Anna Pierce Hobbs Bigsby was
Speaker 1: definitely a real person. Among other things, she and her
Speaker 1: relatives and descendants show up in various census records. I
Speaker 1: think there are descendants living today. I'm so sorry if
Speaker 1: I have offended you. It is likely that at least
Speaker 1: some of this story about her is true, like that
Speaker 1: she was a midwife and was really dedicated to helping
Speaker 1: her community. It is also possible that an indigenous woman
Speaker 1: told her about white snake root and that she took
Speaker 1: steps to try it to eradicate it from around Rock Creek,
Speaker 1: decades before the USDA confirmed the cause of milk sickness.
Speaker 1: But a lot of Hall's writing about doctor Anna is
Speaker 1: incredibly dramatic. The title of Anna's War against River pirates
Speaker 1: and cave bandits of John A. Merle's Northern Dive Kind
Speaker 1: of speaks for itself. Doctor Anna is written as a
Speaker 1: larger than life, full hero angel of the Ozarks, a
Speaker 1: praying doctor, and a teacher who worked miracles, evading outlaws
Speaker 1: at some points and converting them to upstanding Christians at others.
Speaker 1: There is a cave of hidden treasure. There is a
Speaker 1: daring leap from a cliff to escape her murderous second husband,
Speaker 1: Ason Bigsby, who she married in eighteen forty seven. In
Speaker 1: this story, Bigsby starts a fire to try to flush
Speaker 1: her out, but the fire is extinguished by a very
Speaker 1: well timed storm. Basically, this manuscript reads like a sensational novel,
Speaker 1: and the milk sickness story is part of one of
Speaker 1: its thirty eight chapters. So I decided to do this
Speaker 1: episode because I was really frustrated by an article I
Speaker 1: read recently that was titled how an eighteen hundred's midwife
Speaker 1: solved a poisonous mystery. This article acknowledges that, according to
Speaker 1: this story, a Shawnee woman showed doctor Anna what plant
Speaker 1: was causing milk sickness, But it still really makes it
Speaker 1: sound like doctor Anna was the one who solved the mystery,
Speaker 1: and this is no unique to this one article. It's
Speaker 1: why I didn't do this episode earlier on. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of pieces over the last few years that
Speaker 1: really give doctor Anna the vast majority of the credit,
Speaker 1: while including this indigenous woman's knowledge almost as an aside.
Speaker 1: Maybe doctor Anna could have worked out the cause of
Speaker 1: milksickness on her own without this woman's help. But while
Speaker 1: there was disagreement about the cause of milksickness, people had
Speaker 1: been connecting it to plants almost all the way back
Speaker 1: to its first descriptions in writing, and according to this story,
Speaker 1: it was the woman known as Aunt Shawnee, not Doctor Anna,
Speaker 1: who made the connection to which specific plant. So I
Speaker 1: expected to be focused in this episode on the way
Speaker 1: this indigenous woman's involvement has really been minimized and overlooked
Speaker 1: and erased in so many articles. I did not expect
Speaker 1: that I would want up questioning whether this entire account
Speaker 1: was genuine. And we want to stress that it is
Speaker 1: completely understandable that people, especially non historians, have used this
Speaker 1: JAMA article as a source and taken its accuracy for granted,
Speaker 1: or have taken for granted that article citing it are accurate.
Speaker 1: It is a peer reviewed medical journal. That's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing we would normally point to and say that's
Speaker 1: a good source, right, But once you start looking deeper
Speaker 1: into this, it really starts to unravel. When I was
Speaker 1: trying to find the original manuscript this story came from,
Speaker 1: I emailed the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois
Speaker 1: University to ask if they really did have it, since
Speaker 1: some of my sources suggested that they did, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't find it in their online search tools. The first
Speaker 1: person who got back to me was university archivist Matt Gorzowski,
Speaker 1: who sent a PDFs of some papers from the collection
Speaker 1: of historian John w. Allen. This pdf included research compiled
Speaker 1: by a man named Norman Ferrell in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: and this research echoed a whole lot of my questions
Speaker 1: about this manuscript and doctor Anna and her diary. Based
Speaker 1: on his own research, Ferrell had concluded that there was
Speaker 1: no diary and that Hall had made it up. Over
Speaker 1: the course of ten exhibits, Ferrell's report presented a lot
Speaker 1: of information that calls Hall's account into question in one
Speaker 1: way or another. Like the eighteen eighty census noted whether
Speaker 1: people could read or write, and according to those census records,
Speaker 1: several of Anna Hobbes's children and grandchildren and other relatives
Speaker 1: could not. I also found reference elsewhere to an eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty six legal document that described her as a midwife,
Speaker 1: which she signed with an ex rather than signing her name,
Speaker 1: which would suggest that maybe she couldn't read or write.
Speaker 1: So did she really formal training in Philadelphia? If she did,
Speaker 1: doesn't it seem like she would have made sure her
Speaker 1: children learned to read. Farrell's exhibits also made the connection
Speaker 1: between Hall's work and the passages on doctor Anna that
Speaker 1: were included in History of Hardin County, including correspondence which
Speaker 1: it made it clear that Hall wanted her to include
Speaker 1: that story in her agriculture section. Farrell also pointed out
Speaker 1: a number of factual discrepancies within Hall's account as well,
Speaker 1: and traced multiple parallels between doctor Anna and doctor Elizabeth Blackwell,
Speaker 1: concluding that Hall may actually have based his description of
Speaker 1: Anna on Blackwell. To be fair, though you could point
Speaker 1: out similar parallels to a number of other nineteenth century
Speaker 1: women we have covered on the show. Some examples of
Speaker 1: discrepancies between Hall's work and what we can substantiate about
Speaker 1: doctor Anna from other sources. Hall makes it sound like
Speaker 1: she and her family came to the area from Virginia
Speaker 1: when she was a teen, but according to marriage and
Speaker 1: birth records, she was born in Tennessee, got married there,
Speaker 1: and had children before moving to Illinois as an adult.
Speaker 1: Hall also makes it sound like her first husband died
Speaker 1: the winter after the source of milk sickness was discovered,
Speaker 1: but Isaac Hobbs seems to have died in eighteen forty five.
Speaker 1: Hall claims that doctor Anna coined the word milk sick
Speaker 1: but it had been in use for at least two
Speaker 1: decades before this could have happened, and he describes her
Speaker 1: children as school aged when her first husband died, so
Speaker 1: after his death she kept herself busy teaching them, But
Speaker 1: according to various birth and death records, those children would
Speaker 1: have been between the ages of fourteen and twenty five
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty five. That also circles back to that
Speaker 1: question of whether or not they were literate. So those
Speaker 1: are just a few examples, and you may have noticed
Speaker 1: that some of these contradictions also contradict our description of
Speaker 1: recent articles on doctor Anna. From the beginning of this
Speaker 1: part of the episode. On top of all of that,
Speaker 1: introducing Norman Ferrell's report was a letter written to historian
Speaker 1: Lowell Aide Derringer in nineteen sixty seven recommending that this
Speaker 1: report be presented to readers of Outdoor Illinois, where Derringer worked.
Speaker 1: This letter recommending that Norman Ferrell's work be published in
Speaker 1: Outdoor Illinois is by doctor William Sniveley, junior, co author
Speaker 1: of the Journal of the American Medical Association article on
Speaker 1: doctor Anna that had been published the year before. In
Speaker 1: this letter, Snivelly says he's not ready to rule out
Speaker 1: his previously expressed conviction that Anna Pierce Hobbes discovered milk sickness,
Speaker 1: but quote, there are so many assertions in Hall's writings
Speaker 1: that have proved to be false that one is justified
Speaker 1: in looking with suspicion upon everything he wrote. In this letter,
Speaker 1: Snivey also mentioned an effort to seek out descendants of
Speaker 1: Anna Pierce High to see if anybody had any stories
Speaker 1: about her that did not come from reading the work
Speaker 1: of Elihugh Hall. I don't know what the results of
Speaker 1: those efforts were, or what other correspondence there may have
Speaker 1: been around this whole subject in the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: but there are just some really big question marks here,
Speaker 1: and we should also take a moment to note that
Speaker 1: the idea that doctor Anna's search for the cause of
Speaker 1: milk sickness happened around eighteen thirty four, making her the
Speaker 1: first to identify it, came from Snivey in Ferby's nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six Jamma article. In Snivey's own words, that year
Speaker 1: is his contention based on the quoted diary passages and
Speaker 1: quote various contemporary events that year isn't actually documented in
Speaker 1: primary sources, making the idea that doctor Anna was the
Speaker 1: first person to pinpoint the cause of milk sickness even shakier. Also,
Speaker 1: Snivee and Ferby published another article in in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine about the research that went into their book Satan's Ferryman,
Speaker 1: A True Tale of the Old Frontier, in which they
Speaker 1: specifically describe Anna's war against River pirates as mixing fact
Speaker 1: and fancy, with no indication of which is which, making
Speaker 1: it not reliable as a factual source. They don't really
Speaker 1: acknowledge there that they cited it as a factual source
Speaker 1: in a different article three years before. Also, Southern Illinois
Speaker 1: historian John w. Allen, whose papers this correspondence came from.
Speaker 1: Wrote a column about doctor Anna in nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: that was reprinted in a book called It Happened in
Speaker 1: Southern Illinois in nineteen sixty eight. I had actually found
Speaker 1: that collection before getting in touch with the folks at
Speaker 1: Southern Illinois University. Like Snivey and Ferby, Alan draws from
Speaker 1: Elihu Hall's work, but he uses a lot of language
Speaker 1: like story and legend and tradition tells us. He doesn't
Speaker 1: specify a year or try to claim that doctor Anna
Speaker 1: was the first person to make the connection between milk
Speaker 1: sickness and white snakeroot. And he also ends by saying,
Speaker 1: of all the lore around doctor Anna quote, there is
Speaker 1: enough of the imaginary to create a supernatural air. I
Speaker 1: feel this is the more appropriate way to discuss material
Speaker 1: that came from this book than to have a glowing
Speaker 1: article saying this is the person who definitively discovered a thing.
Speaker 1: And just as one final note, if you happen to
Speaker 1: have white snakeroot growing in your yard, you do not
Speaker 1: need to go pull it all up unless you have
Speaker 1: grazing animals that could eat it. Among other things, in
Speaker 1: eastern North America, it is a native plant that blooms
Speaker 1: later than many other flowers, so it's an important late
Speaker 1: season food source for bees and other pollinators. Just do
Speaker 1: not eat it or feed it to livestock. It does
Speaker 1: spread its seeds similarly to dandelions, though, so keep an
Speaker 1: eye on that. We'll have a lot more to say
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes. I think, do you have a
Speaker 1: listener mail in the meantime? We do so, yes, So
Speaker 1: first a quick note from Christy. In our Unearthed Part
Speaker 1: one July seventeenth episode, we talked about carousel being restored
Speaker 1: by Carousel Works in Mansfield, Ohio, and I could not
Speaker 1: remember who sent us. Someone had sent us a letter
Speaker 1: previously talked to us about working restoring carousels, and I
Speaker 1: could not put my hands on that email. And so
Speaker 1: in this note Christie noted, yes, indeed, that is where
Speaker 1: that person worked. We actually included their email in the
Speaker 1: Saturday Classic on Carousels that we ran in January of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. As soon as Christy said this in
Speaker 1: this email, I was like, oh, yeah, obviously I remember that. Now.
Speaker 1: That was not the full email, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: note that part. Thank you so much, and thank you
Speaker 1: for a very adorable dog picture. Two little dogs who
Speaker 1: are crying because they want to go for a walk.
Speaker 1: They're so so sad that they are not yet on
Speaker 1: their walk. I mean the way they're tortured by the
Speaker 1: withholding of walk, the withholding of walk. I also got
Speaker 1: a note from Linda who wrote to say hi, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. While visiting family in Michigan, we decided to
Speaker 1: go to Greenfield Village. In case you're not aware, the
Speaker 1: village is comprised of historical buildings and homes. Henry Ford
Speaker 1: moved into one property and is now a museum. Exploring
Speaker 1: the grounds, we saw many connections to past episode subjects,
Speaker 1: from Henry Ford himself and the Rubber episodes, to the
Speaker 1: Right Brothers in the History of Flight, to Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: and the current Wars. However, the reason I'm writing is
Speaker 1: that Noah Webster's house is on the grounds. I messily
Speaker 1: recapped the Dictionary Wars for my husband and even caught
Speaker 1: the interest of my daughter momentterily distracting her from the
Speaker 1: search for ice cream. Attached our pictures with my daughter
Speaker 1: in front of the house, Webster's library and a copy
Speaker 1: of his famous Dictionary. I look forward to every episode
Speaker 1: and an additional benefit of being on vacation is knowing
Speaker 1: I'll have several episodes in the queue to catch up on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the years of entertainment, Linda. Thank you
Speaker 1: Linda for this email. In these pictures, I don't think
Speaker 1: I knew that Henry Ford moved a bunch of historical
Speaker 1: homes to one property. Why. That's fascinating. I definitely did
Speaker 1: not know that there was a Noah Webster house in Michigan,
Speaker 1: because there is also a Noah Webster House which is
Speaker 1: his birthplace in Connecticut. Yeah, so it's like, this is
Speaker 1: the house that he lived in later on and wrote
Speaker 1: the dictionary in the Connecticut one is the one he
Speaker 1: was born in. So thank you so much, Linda. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast or a history podcast, aiheartradio dot com.
Speaker 1: And we're all over social media at mist in History.
Speaker 1: I keep saying that, but now there's more social media
Speaker 1: than there were before, and we're not on any of
Speaker 1: the new ones yet, so you can still find us
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com, slash missed Inistory, and I guess
Speaker 1: on the website formerly known as Twitter, and you can
Speaker 1: send us an email if you like it history podcasts
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Missed in History Class
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