What is Milk Fever?

[Aunt Sally]

Great great grandmother died of this.  Obviously to do with childbirth, but does anyone know what it was exactly?

Best wishes,

Sally

[ricky1]

Hi Sally
Found this by googling about
Milk fever
 A mild fever, usually occurring at the beginning of lactation, associated with infection following childbirth 

ricky

[Aunt Sally]

Hello Ricky,

Thanks for answering my question.

Best wishes,

Sally

[Helen D]

Cows get it!

 I think it is caused by a lack of magnesium brought on by lactation, but I may be wrong, and of course the human version may be different!

Helen

[pjbuk007]

ricky1, I think you got that definition here:

http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?milk+fever

Unfortunately this site is just an automated dictionary - and usually IMHO not very useful for medical terms for genealogists.

Milk Fever nowadays refers to a disease of cows.

Formerly, and sometimes now, it would refer to mastitis, ie infection/inflammation of the lactating breast in humans.

However, it is usually in historical/genealogical terms taken to mean puerperal fever, which is an infection in a recently-delivered woman.

Commonly this would be an overwhelming sepsis which killed women pre-antibiotics.  Often this would be via the umbilical cord being cut with a dirty instrument (this is a very common cause of maternal mortality in the developing world today), leading to tetanus. or the labour being prolonged allowing infection via the intr-uterine route.  Or almost any other serious infection.

Hope this helps.

Just seen two last posts - google is not your friend in this case, sorry!

[Keziahemm]

Cows get it!

 I think it is caused by a lack of magnesium brought on by lactation, but I may be wrong, and of course the human version may be different!

Helen

In cows lack of calcium - have to be given injections of calcium solution which contains magnesium and phosphate(?).  Poor things very often go down and a real job to get them to their feet, if they don't they bloat and die    

Wonder if similar with humans in the past, before symptoms were recognised and treated?

Susan  

[ricky1]

Hi Pj

didnt get it from that site, got it from
http://rmhh.co.uk/index.html

but if you google old ailments comes up with loads of site about milk fever

[liverpool annie]

It was extremely painful !! 

and there was nothing that they were able to take in those days ..... except maybe castor oil 

a woman had to be bound very tightly and walk around if she could - like an Amazon woman !!

The fever could become very high .... and the woman was debilitated ..... an awful way to die ! 

And because they couldn't feed ..... the babies were in danger too !

[Dancing Master]

It was known as milk fever but the correct name was Purpueral Fever ie  Puerperal fever - Elevated temperature after giving birth to an infant