[28] The American farmers are just beginning to wake up on this subject,
and before long we hope to see our pasture lands free from all poisonous
plants. Dr. Whitlaw says, "A friend of mine had two fields cleared of
buttercups, dandelion, ox-eye, daisy, sorrel, hawk-weed, thistles,
mullein, and a variety of other poisonous or noxious plants: they were
dried, burnt, and their ashes strewed over the fields. He had them sown
as usual, and found that the crops of hay and pasturage were more than
double what they had been before. I was furnished with butter for two
successive summers during the months of July and August of 1827. The
butter kept for thirty days, and proved, at the end of that time, better
than that fresh churned and brought to the Brighton or Margate markets.
It would bear salting at that season of the year."
[29] Unfortunately, they do not all practise it. Dr. Graff says, "There
is a murderous practice now carried on in certain districts, in which
the inhabitants will not themselves consume the butter and cheese
manufactured; but, with little solicitude for the lives or health of
others, they send it, in large quantities, to be sold in the cities of
the west, particularly Louisville, Kentucky, and St. Louis, Missouri. Of
the truth of this I am well apprised by actual observation; and I am as
certain that it has often caused death in those cities, when the medical
attendants viewed it as some anomalous form of disease, not suspecting
the means by which poison had been conveyed among them. Physicians of
the latter city, having been questioned particularly on this subject,
have mentioned to me a singular and often fatal disease, which appeared
in certain families, the cases occurring simultaneously, and all traces
of it disappearing suddenly, and which I cannot doubt were the result of
poisoned butter or cheese. This recklessness of human life it should be
our endeavor to prevent; and the heartless wretches who practise it
should be brought to suffer a punishment commensurate with the enormity
of their crime. From the wide extent of the country in which it is
carried on, we readily perceive the difficulties to be encountered in
the effort to put a stop to the practice. This being the case, our next
proper aim should be to investigate the nature of the cause, and
establish a more proper plan of treatment, by which it may be robbed of
its terrors, and the present large proportionate mortality diminished."