![]() ![]() As I looked through books in the Cornell University Library stacks, I noticed one about pellagra. How did you first hear about pellagra? I stumbled on the subject more than a dozen years ago while researching scurvy for a magazine article. Yet pellagra had been a scourge without a cure in Europe for hundreds of years. ![]() I have met Southerners who heard a grandparent talk about the dreaded disease, but few American doctors today have ever seen a case.īefore 1902, American doctors either had never heard of pellagra or thought it was a disease that didn’t exist in the United States. Although pellagra struck millions of people in the first half of the 20th century, it is so rare today that it has been forgotten. Why isn’t pellagra more well known? Because it is a medical success story. Jarrow spoke to SLJ about her experiences uncovering this now little-known disease, the scientific method, and her research process. In the meticulously researched Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat (Boyds Mills, 2014), author Gail Jarrow describes how this “medical mystery” unfolded. The roots of pellagra eluded scientists until the early 20th century, when Joseph Goldberger, a physician and epidemiologist, found that the malady was caused by extreme nutritional deficiencies. ![]() A potentially fatal disease with a simple cure, pellagra menaced impoverished and vulnerable populations for centuries, causing symptoms such as a striking red rash, insanity and mental confusion, and physical weakness. ![]()
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