INVESTIGATION OF PELLAGRA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14360, 4 February 1911, Page 4 (Supplement)

INVESTIGATION OF PELLAGRA.

A SOURCE OF INSANITY. Thanks to Mr Cantlie, Sir Patrick Jlanscu, andjiir Krunt-on, a very influential committee was formed some time ago, an exchange recalls, money was raised, and Dr Sambon vas sent to Italy to investigate the oa'isition of pellagra. In Italy Dr Sanibon was joined by Capfain Siler and Dr La.vind.er, of ti» United States Army, wlio had been detailed by the American trovernmen-c to study pellagra in Italy after Laving already worked at it ia tho States. Although there is no pellagra in England, the disease is of the greatest importance to the British—first, because it prevails extensively in JEg>yt and in the Y/esi Indies; secondly because the elucidation of its causation is bound to advance our knowledge of the'eausation of other obscure diseases such as bcri beri, for instance, whiah are expensively prevalent in our colonies. Dr Sambon wont to Italy in 3lareh,. 1010, and for three montiis studied the d ssase jn the provinces of Bergamo, Brecia, llitan, Pad-ova, Rome,' and lerugia. He found that maize, either bad or good, could in no way account for the diseaes. Besides, 'he found numerous pellagrins - who had never eaten maize. He.found that pellagra is hunted to the immediate neighbourhood of certain streams infested with Simul;um larvae. He proved that the cudenu'c centres of the disease have occupied exactly the same places among the foothills of mountainous regions for at least a century, because in certain pro vinces, such as Belluna, Padova and Brescia, the disease shows to-day the very same distribution and prevalence recrd-ed by authors who studied the disease in these regions a/centurv afro. He has been able to prove that the I season of recurrence of the disease j s .' also the season of infection, that if the j spring is retarded as it- was this vear. I bath "the sand-flies and the pellagrous ! eruption were delayed, and, 'vice versa-' j that an early spring hastens the appearance of both sand-flies and pellagrous ' rash. He found -the disease to be ex- ' eeedingly prevalent within the endemic ;' centres which are the stations of the j sand-fly. In these 'foci' whole families! are attacked, indeed the whole population is affected. Out of these centres the disease never spreads to others In families who liave remwed from' e n endemic centre to a heal'ihy locality the children born within the endemiccentre are pellagrins like their parents those born after removal are perfectly healthy. The disease is not hereditary nor contagious; it is like malaria, like yellow fever, transmitted bv an ius°et the sand-fly. The Simuliidae or sand-flies Vte fiercely in the early morning and at sunset, never in the hottest hours of the day. They never approach towns as mosquitoes do. and this is the reason why towns are free from pellagra and why tho disease is limited to rural districts and to those field labourers who work in the neighbourhood of infested streams. Thus to the already long list of insect-borne diseases we must add pellagra, one of tho diseases which gives rise to insanity.