Cereal Food Poisoning and its Relation to the Etiology of Pellagra

Abstract

Pellagra is a comparatively modern disease. The first account of it dates from 1735 when under the namemal de la rosait was very fully described by Gaspar Casal who at that time practised at Oviedo and found it endemic among the Asturian peasantry. In Lombardy it was recognised about 1730 and only much later (1771) was systematically described by Frapolli as pellagra (rough skin), but Strambio, who was physician to a special hospital for pellagrins at Legnano, states (1784) that many of his patients told him that their fathers and grandfathers had suffered from the disease. Early in the nineteenth century it was comparatively common in Gascony and about 1836 it was beginning to be recognised in Roumania. In the United States sporadic cases seem to have been noticed in 1864, and since 1907 it has increased to an extent which has seriously disquieted the public health authorities. In Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, the Balkans, Brazil, the West Indies and other countries it is common and well known. Wherever it has appeared endemically it has followed on the introduction of maize as a field-crop and its adoption (by the rural population especially) as a chief and staple article of diet.