February 4: Curing Pellagra

On this date in 1915, Dr. Joseph Goldberger began to conduct dietary experiments with eleven prisoners (offered pardons for their participation) in Mississippi to determine the cause of pellagra, a loathesome skin disease that was then causing 10,000 deaths annually in the U.S. By adjusting the food in the inmates’ meals, Goldberger determined that pellagra is caused by poor diet, not by bacteria. The study alerted health professionals to the importance of essential nutrients and vitamins found in food and launched the field of modern nutrition research. A decade earlier, Goldberger had fought yellow fever, typhoid fever, dengue fever, diptheria and typhus in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Mississippi, and elsewhere, usually contracting the diseases he was seeking to contain or cure. His work on pellagra was greeted with hostility by Southern state governments, particularly when Goldberger advocated social reforms and land reform to put an end to this poverty-related disease.

“The land reform that Goldberger believed necessary to eliminate pellagra was accomplished not by scientific reasoning but by the invasion of boll weevils. The insect destroyed cotton fields and forced Southerners to diversify their crops. By growing more food crops, Southerners improved their diets and suffered less from pellagra.” —Alan Kraut