Critics, many unable to part from the germ theory of pellagra, raised doubts. Goldberger hoped to squelch those reservations by demonstrating the existence of a particular substance that when removed from the diet of healthy individuals resulted in pellagra.
With the cooperation of Mississippi's progressive governor, Earl Brewer, Goldberger experimented on eleven healthy volunteer prisoners at the Rankin State Prison Farm in Offered pardons in return for their participation, the volunteers ate a corn-based diet.
Six of the eleven showed pellagra rashes after five months. Expert dermatologists made the actual diagnosis of pellagra to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest on Goldberger's part.
Although many scientific colleagues sang Goldberger's praises, even mentioning a Nobel nomination, others still doubted. MacNeal challenged the results. One Birmingham physician referred to the experiment as "half-baked.
Angry and frustrated, Goldberger would not give up trying to persuade his critics that pellagra was a dietary disorder, not an infectious disease. He hoped that one final dramatic experiment would convince his critics.
On April 26, he injected five cubic centimeters of a pellagrin's blood into the arm of his assistant, Dr. George Wheeler. Wheeler shot six centimeters of such blood into Goldberger. Then they swabbed out the secretions of a pellagrin's nose and throat and rubbed them into their own noses and throats.
They swallowed capsules containing scabs of pellagrins' rashes. Others joined what Goldberger called his "filth parties," including Mary Goldberger. None of the volunteers got pellagra. Despite Goldberger's heroic efforts, a few physicians remained staunch opponents of the dietary theory of pellagra. Goldberger seated. Joseph Goldberger never discovered precisely what was missing from the diets of pellagrins.
The year following the Great Flood, Dr. Joseph Goldberger fell gravely ill of hypernephroma, a rare form of cancer. He died on January 17, His ashes were sprinkled over the Potomac River as a rabbi chanted Kaddish.
During the next decade, Conrad A. Elevjhem learned that a deficiency of nicotinic acid, better known as B vitamin niacin, resulted in canine black tongue disease.
In studies conducted in Alabama and Cincinnati, Dr. Tom Spies found that nicotinic acid cured human pellagrins as well. Tulane University scientists discovered that the amino acid tryptophan was a precursor to niacin. When tryptophan was added to commercial foods such as bread to "fortify" them, it prevented the scourge of the South. Today, pellagra has been all but banished, except for infrequent occurrences during times of famine and displacement. Heroes are few in science as in every field.
At first, patients felt melancholy and weak. Some then developed swollen tongues and drooled excessively. As the disease advanced, people displayed a symmetrical photosensitive rash across their limbs, neck and face. For others, the disease progressed through the four Ds: dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death.
In the intervening centuries, pellagra was particularly widespread — and well documented — in northern Italy, with cases reported as far afield as South Africa and Egypt.
The U. Clearly, something had changed. But what? He went on to organize the first U. One theory held that pellagra was an infectious disease carried by Simulium flies. Yellow fever, malaria and Rocky Mountain spotted fever all had been proven in recent years to have an insect vector. Why not pellagra? Some proponents regarded only spoiled corn as the culprit. He was married to a Southern woman.
And he had lots of lab experience. The grain had only recently become a popular foodstuff. They stopped planting vegetables and keeping livestock. As a result, many poor Southerners now ate almost exclusively what was called the three Ms: low-quality meat, molasses and meal industrially refined cornmeal — the same cheap gruel often served at orphanages and asylums. Pellagra was most widespread among populations subsisting on the three Ms. Pellagra rates there plummeted. Because it was a farm prison, its inmates had a fairly balanced diet.
Goldberger's volunteers were given the poor Southern diet he had seen associated with pellagra. That was the only difference. The other inmates ate the usual farm fare. Every effort was made to prevent and rule out infectious transmission. And within months, the volunteers came down with pellagra. Then the researchers tried to catch the disease from those already suffering -- they couldn't. The pellagra symptoms disappeared when the volunteers were given meat, fresh vegetables, and milk.
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