A condition of cattle and sheep in the western US, caused by eating white snakeroot, which contains a toxic alcohol. It sometimes occurs in humans who have eaten meat or dairy produce from affected animals.
Example sentencesExamples
Abraham's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died of milk sickness in 1818 and was buried on this hill.
Tremetol may be transmitted through the milk and butterfat to humans and other animals, causing milk sickness in them.
Often fatal, milk sickness was caused by a poison passed through the milk from cows grazing in woods and uncultivated land in the midwestern United States where a form of the snakeroot plant grew.
She was also a herbalist and healer and showed Anna a plant that we now call ‘milkweed’, which had caused the same symptoms as the milk sickness did in her own tribe.
There used to be entire epidemics of milk sickness where people would be fine one day and dead the next.
Definition of milk sickness in US English:
milk sickness
noun
A condition of cattle and sheep in the western US, caused by eating white snakeroot, which contains a toxic alcohol. It sometimes occurs in humans who have eaten meat or dairy products from affected animals.
Example sentencesExamples
Often fatal, milk sickness was caused by a poison passed through the milk from cows grazing in woods and uncultivated land in the midwestern United States where a form of the snakeroot plant grew.
She was also a herbalist and healer and showed Anna a plant that we now call ‘milkweed’, which had caused the same symptoms as the milk sickness did in her own tribe.
Abraham's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died of milk sickness in 1818 and was buried on this hill.
There used to be entire epidemics of milk sickness where people would be fine one day and dead the next.
Tremetol may be transmitted through the milk and butterfat to humans and other animals, causing milk sickness in them.