THE KANSAS UNIVERSITY 

 SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



Vol. VIII, No. S] JULY, 1913. [ ^^^^^^b 



University Experiments with Sand Fly 

 and Pellagra. 



An account of endeavors to substantiate the Sambon theory of the trans- 

 mission of pellagra by the sand fly, Simuliu))i. 



BY S. J. HUNTER. 



THE etiology of pellagra has been a subject of serious 

 inquiry for over two hundred years. Formerly an old- 

 world problem, it is now found widely distributed in this 

 country. The date of its first appearance in North America is 

 not well established. 



Three theories have been advanced as to the cause of this 

 disease: (1) The zeistic theory, based on the work of Bal- 

 lardini, in 1845, giving corn poison due to the excessive use 

 of corn products as the cause, supplanting the old theory of 

 faulty metabolism; (2) the cottonseed products poison theory 

 of Mizell, in 1911; and (3) the sand-fly theory of Sambon, 

 dating from 1910. The first two rest on malnutrition ; the 

 last on the action of a parasite. 



Since this paper deals only with the parasitic theory of Sam- 

 bon, the grounds on which Sambon bases his theory may prop- 

 erly be outlined here : 



A. The endemic centers of pellagra in Italy have remained 

 the same since the disease was first described. 



B. The season of the recurrence of pellagra coincides with 

 the season of the appearance of the full-fledged sand fly, even 

 to the extent that if the spring is early or late the sand fly is 

 early or late in appearing, and pellagra cases are correspond- 

 ingly early or late in their appearance. 



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