Milk Sickness from White Snakeroot
One of the most famous victims of milk sickness was Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of Abraham Lincoln.
She fought the disease for a week but finally succumbed, as did her aunt and uncle and several other people in the small town of Little Pigeon Creek, Indiana.
She died in 1818 at the age of thirty-four, leaving behind nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln and his sister, Sarah. Lincoln’s father built the coffins himself; young Abraham helped by carving the pegs for his mother’s casket.
— Amy Stewart, gardener and garden writer, Wicked Plants, White Snakeroot