1702 



PELLAGRA 



the celebrated Thiery visited Madrid, where he met Casal, and was 

 shown cases of pellagra, and afterwards he observed one case him- 

 self. On his return to Paris he wrote a paper entitled, ' Description 

 d'une Maladie appellee Mai de la Rose aux Asturies,' which was 

 published in the second volume of Vandermonde's journal called 

 ' Recueil Periodique d'Observations de Medecine, deChirurgie, et 

 de Pharmacie,' in May, 1755. It is pleasing to record that not 

 merely did Thiery give a most excellent description of the clinical 

 signs of pellagra, but he also gave full credit to Casal for his, as yet 

 unpublished, great discovery. 



These publications of Casal and Thiery laid the foundations of 

 the modern knowledge of pellagra. We will now turn to the various 

 countries, and study, very briefly, the history of the disease therein. 



Italy. — Early in the eighteenth century the disease appears to be 

 well known to the medical men of Cremona and Cremasco, as well 

 as to Antonio Terzaghi at Sesto Calende on Lago Maggiore, and to 

 Francesco Zanetti, who recognized it in 1769 at Canobis, also on 

 Lago Maggiore. It will thus be seen that pellagra, hinted at 

 in 1578 in Milan, written about by Ramazzini in 1713, had become 

 a disease well known to the general practitioner and peasantry, and 

 only required an historian to become recognized by the medical 

 profession. This historian was found in Francesco Frapolli, one of 

 the physicians in the large hospital in Milan, who in 177 1 published 

 his work, 'Animadversiones in Morbum Vulgo Pelagram,' in which 

 for the first time the word ' pellagra ' (spelt with a single /) was used. 

 This work, followed by those of a number of authors, drew more 

 attention to the disease, with the result that the Patriotic Society 

 of Milan offered a prize for the best essay on the subject, while the 

 Kaiser Joseph founded a special hospital for pellagrins, and placed 

 it under the charge of Gaetano Strambio, whose justly celebrated 

 work, ' De Pellagra/ appeared in three volumes during the years 

 1786-1789. In 1787 two young Dutch doctors, Jensen and Hollen- 

 hagen, and a young Frenchman, Levacher de la Feutrie, visited 

 Italy to study pellagra, concerning which they published reports 

 on their return to Holland and France. In 1799 Chevalier gave 

 an account of Jensen's work in the London Medical Review and 

 Magazine. In this way the knowledge of the disease called pellagra 

 started and spread. 



In the meanwhile a disease called ' Scorbuto Alpino ' had been 

 definitely recognized by Giuseppe Antonio Pujati in 1740 in Feltre, 

 to the north of Venice, and the same disease was found later by 

 Antonio Gaetano Pjijati, the son of Giuseppe Antonio Pujatij and 

 Nascimbeni in the Venetian Friuli, and this disease found its his- 

 torian in Odoardi, a pupil of the older Pujati, who in 1776 published 

 his work, ' Di Una Specie Particolare di Scorbuto,' in which an 

 account of Professor Pujati's discoveries was given. In this way 

 the knowledge of the disease ' Scorbuto Alpino ' was started, so 

 that in Italy at this time there were described two separate diseases 

 under different names, and found in different regions; and it was 



