. If not properly treated it is fatal both to the cow and to
any human being who drinks her fresh milk or eats her butter. It is not
transmitted by sour milk or by buttermilk. There is a characteristic
fetor of the breath. It is said that milk from an infected cow will not
foam and that silver is turned black by it. Mountaineers are divided in
opinion as to whether this disease is of vegetable or of mineral origin;
some think it is an efflorescence from gas that settles on plants. This
much is certain: that it disappears from "milk-sick coves" when they are
cleared of timber and the sunlight let in. The prevalent treatment is an
emetic, followed by large doses of apple brandy and honey; then oil to
open the bowels. Perhaps the extraordinary distaste for fresh milk and
butter, or the universal suspicion of these foods that mountaineers
evince in so many localities, may have sprung up from experience with
"milk-sick" cows. I have not found this malady mentioned in any treatise
on medicine; yet it has been known from our earliest frontier times.
Abraham Lincoln's mother died of it.

That the hill folk remain a rugged and hardy people in spite of
unsanitary conditions so gross that I can barely hint at them, is due
chiefly to their love of pure air and pure water. No mountain cabin
needs a window to ventilate it: there are cracks and cat-holes
everywhere, and, as I have said, the doors are always open except at
night. "Tight houses," sheathed or plastered, are universally despised,
partly from inherited shiftlessness, partly for less obvious reasons.

One of Miss MacGowan's characters fairly insulted the neighborhood by
building a modern house. "Why lordy! Lookee hyer, Creed," remonstrated
Doss Provine over a question of matching boards and battening joints,
"ef you git yo' pen so almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh
air. Man's bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open
all the time like we-all do; but when you're a-holdin' co't and
sech-like maybe you'll want to shet the do' sometimes--and then whar'll
ye git breath to breathe?... All these here glass winders is blame
foolishness to _me_. Ef ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes
that ye don't want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the
walls full o' holes an' set in glass winders, an' any feller that's got
a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set
by the fire of an evenin'."

When mountain peop