Word: pellagra
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Since 1906 pellagra has been a horror to the South. In the springtime it strikes people whose winter diet has been confined too closely to corn and pork. The first symptoms: dizziness, headaches, diarrhoea, painful skin rash...
Disorganization of the nervous system is followed by imbecility, death. Between 30% and 40% of clinic and hospital cases died in the first years after pellagra's invasion of the South was noted...
...late Dr. Joseph Goldberger of the U. S. Public Health Service, after working in the South, flouted medical men who had thought for 200 years that pellagra was infectious, by announcing that it was a result of a poorly balanced diet. To prove his point he had himself, his wife and 14 assistants inoculated with the blood of an infected woman. They suffered no ill effects...
...volunteers in a Mississippi prison, who would undergo a test. The test was alluring. He was going to put them in a house apart and feed them for six months on biscuits, mush. rice, syrup, gravy, sugar, sweet potatoes. The prisoners were enthusiastic until, six months later, they developed pellagra. They were cured with milk and meat, then pardoned...
Deduced Dr. Goldberger: pellagra is caused by lack of lean meat, eggs, milk, which poor people cannot afford. All contain Vitamin...