Planta letal al hombre: leer por explicaciones
Toxic lethal plant, read for  explanation
Although a few Native American tribes used white snakeroot for a variety of conditions, the plant is poisonous and not generally considered to be therapeutic. It is included in the Medicinal Plant Garden because of its historical importance. In the early 1800s in the Midwest, many settlers who drank milk from cows with “trembles” became very ill and often died of a condition called “The Slows” or “Milk sickness.” This was the mysterious condition that caused the death of Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in 1818 in Spencer County in southern Indiana. As populations increased and cows were kept fenced in pastures and couldn’t wander into the woods, the incidence of milk sickness declined precipitously. The solution of the mystery of milk sickness was that cows that ate white snakeroot ingested a poison that was passed on in the milk. The solution was officially completed with the identification of the toxin tremetol in 1927. Although, based on a tip from a Native American woman, pioneer doctor Dr. Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby had taught her patients to get rid of white snakeroot plants back in about 1828, she was not credited with figuring out the problem of milk sickness. White snakeroot is quite similar in appearance and grows in the same areas as the very useful plant boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum).

Origin:
America

Hull, Kathleen; Photog. Hull, Meredith /Indiana Medical History Museum: Guide to the Medicinal Plant Garden./ USA: Indiana Medical History Museum. 2010. -- p. 58.