COTTON-GROWERS' DISTRESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17843, 26 July 1921, Page 5

COTTON-GROWERS' DISTRESS

UNABLE TO SELL CROPS. FARMERS HALF STARVED. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. Peed. 1.1-30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, July 24. The Public Health Service his issued a statement declaring that Pellagra will claim approximately 100,000 persons in fclir cotton belt States. It is expected that 10 per cent, will die. Tenant farmers svlio devote the greater part of their land to cotton have been unable to sell their crops, and are therefore living on salt pork, cornmeal, and molasses, which is term-starvation diet. The diversity of cn-.ps, which from time immemorial has been the problem of the South, has not pci I,cen solved.

Pellagra is a peculiar disease of corar'.Mtively modern origin. For some time was supposed to be practically confined to the peasantry in parts of Italy, particularly Lombardy, France, Spain, Rumania and Corfu, but it has since been klentified in India. Egypt and the United States. The malady is essentially chronic in character and in the early stages the skin of the patient becomes shrivelled md sallow. The muscles become wasted fcnd sensibility diminishes. After a certain stage the disease passes into a profound disorganisation of the nervous system. There" is a tendency to melancholy, Imbecility and curious mummified condition »f the body. The causation of the disease has recently come up for new investigation in connection with the new work done in relation to sleeping sickness and other tropical diseases. So lobg as it was supposed to be peculiar to the Italian peasinhv, it was associated simply with their staple diet and was regarded as due to the eating of mouldy maize. But the irea of maize consumption is now known U> be wider than that of pellagra, and pellagra is found where maize is at least, lot an ordinary diet. It has been suggested that pelfagra is probably protozoal ti origin and that t;he protozoon is comOunicated. by sandflies, just as in sleeping jickness by the tsetse fly.