Magic and Mastitis

The Swiss veterinarian Gattiker (1848) was the first to give a description of problems of mastitis in a scientific veterinary journal [1]. 

The disease was called “gelber Galt” because the milk that was produced by those cows is yellow (”gelb”) and the amount is considerably reduced (“Galt”). In his paper he discussed what he thought could be the causes of the disease but first  he described what he called an interesting case of superstition.

“ In approximately 8 subsequent years all the cows, four in total, of an owner in Schönenberg, in a high mountanous region, were affected by this disease [i.e.gelber Galt], forcing him each summer to sell a few of his most beautiful cows to the butcher, with rather great financial loss. Then this owner came to think that his cattle was bewitched. A fortune-teller […] advised him to go to a referee [Scharfrichter] in Schwyz to get help, because an old neighbour-woman might be the witch. The referee ordered the owner of the cows to pray in the stable, together with the fortune-teller and a certain N.N. […] at witching hour, at midnight, and to fasten a leather belt around the abdomen of the cows, and to proceed several nights with this ceremony. A veterinarian may have advised to go on with it until the old woman were prayed to death. By chance I came to this remarkable performance, made this otherwise sensibnle man reproaches about his superstition, told him that his cattle could be cured in an entirely natural way if he should make a change in the diet and also that his stables were in a poor condition.”

Gattiker described that he proposed a therapy of salts and herbs.

“ After a short time the milk secretion started again and the leather belts could be discarded.

Late in the autumn the old neighbour-woman died; the people believed she had been prayed to death.”

Gattiker went on to discuss other causes, such as cold; but he seriously doubted whether contagion might be the cause.

1. [-] Gattiker, ‘Beschreibung der Krankheit der Kühe, welche in einigen Gegenden der Schweiz unter dem Namen “gelber Galt”, auch Gelti, bekannt ist.’ Archiv fürTierheilkunde 10 (1848) 1-5.