Z- 



_aULLETIN NO. 159. 



A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF KENTUCKY LO 



CALITIES IN WHICH PELLAGRA 



IS PREVALENT.* 



Herbert S. Barber, 



U. S. National Museum, 



V/; icirgton, D. C. 



By H. Garman, Entomologist and Botanist of the Station. 



The suggestion somewhat recently made by European 

 investigators that pellagra is in Italy and other European 

 countries conveyed by a small fly belonging to the genus 

 Simulium has aroused a good deal of interest on the part of 

 the American medical practioner, and the question has been 

 raised as to whether or not the insect species charged with 

 the mischief occurs in this country, and if not whether we 

 may have as intermediate host some related species of the 

 genus. None of the species found by Dr. Sambon in regions 

 in Italy in which the disease is prevalent occurs in the 

 United States. Simulium reptans, said to have been accused 

 more positively than others, does occur, however, in Green- 

 land, and may possibly yet be discovered in the northern 

 portion of the continent. 



The disease is now prevalent in sections of the southern 

 states, and within the past two years has attracted attention 

 in some of the mountain counties of Kentucky, from which 

 counties a number of cases have been sent to the Eastern 

 Kentucky Asylum for the Insane at Lexington. The recog- 

 nition of these cases in the Asylum has perhaps more than 

 anything else served to concentrate attention on the dis- 

 ease as a danger in the State, and led to a conference of our 



*The writer has not at any time ccmmitted himself to tlie "Insect theory" of the s|)read 

 of peilai^ra. He is n )t satistied with the evidence, and intends in this bulletin simjjly to 

 present facts which may bear upon the problem. 



