THE MICEOBE OF PELLAGRA 263 



and deals out drugs to him to see what effect they 

 will have this is mal-practice pure and simple. 

 An honest physician would frankly confess that he 

 does not know, and decline to give medicine. Any 

 other course is professional dishonesty. 



Pellagra is bad enough without being made 

 worse by drugs. Among other things, the patient 

 suffers complete physical prostration, and the 

 deepest melancholy, with his body gradually grow- 

 ing dark and darker, until, in many cases, it be- 

 comes coal black. 



But, happily, by recent investigations the cause 

 of pellagra is well understood. The disease comes 

 from the use of spoiled or mouldy corn for pur- 

 poses of food or drink. In spoiling or molding, 

 a microbe, the fungus of mold, generates in the 

 corn poison. This poison finds its way to the 

 stomach in the food or drink, and thus causes the 

 disease. 



The microbe that causes this disease is different 

 from all the other disease-producing microbes con- 

 sidered in this work. It is much larger, and works 

 its mischief in a different way. All the others, as 

 already seen, first enter the body, then by their 

 life processes generate the poison. But this one 

 does not enter the body at all. It lives outside the 

 body, free in nature. When corn is not thoroughly 

 ripened, or fails to be well cured, this microbe at- 

 tacks the kernel, generating the poisonous mold. 



When corn, thus poisoned, is used for food, the 



