HISTORY 



1705 



Briere de Boismont in 1830 drew attention to the fact that 

 pellagra occurred around Paris, and in 1847 Ardusset showed that 

 the ' Maladie de la Teste ' of Hameau was pellagra. In 1843 

 Marchand, after investigations extending from 1836 to 1842, em- 

 phasized the fact that pellagra was essentially a disease of the 

 country, and not of the town. In 1845 appeared Roussel's account 

 of his researches in France and Spain, to Vv^hich reference has already 

 been made. In 1865 Billod published his account of asylum pel- 

 lagra as a pseudo-pellagra — that is to say, a pellagra not due to 

 maize. Sambon and one of us have investigated the pellagra of 

 the Landes, where the disease has greatly diminished, and this 

 appears to be associated with a diminution in the malaria of the 

 same region, which appears to be due in part, at least, to the im- 

 proved cultivation of the soil, the drainage of swamps, etc., and 

 the stocking of the waters with fish. 



Austria. — The disease was first noticed in the Tyrol, where it 

 is still very prevalent, and where it is being ably studied by 

 Merk, Weiss, and others. In 1794 Nicolas and Jambon reported- 

 its presence near Vienna. 



Hungary and Roiimania. — In 1846 Lachaise drew attention to an 

 epidemic of pellagra in Roumania, in 1856 Julius Theodori reported 

 its presence in the Danube provinces, while in 1862 Bouchard 

 pointed out that Sigmund said that the Hungarian pellagra existed 

 solely in the vast plains bordering the Rivers Danube and Theiss 

 — i.e., in the Alfold — ^which were often covered by inundations. It 

 is interesting to note that these rivers have been regulated, and 

 that the disease is said to have considerably abated there. Be that 

 as it may, there is to our personal knowledge a considerable amount 

 of pellagra in Transylvania, where it has been studied by Hollander, 

 Kaiser, and others, and in Roumania, where Babes says there are 

 more than 200,000 cases. 



Macedonia. — Cases of pellagra have been observed by us in 

 Macedonia. 



The British Islands. — Though reported as long ago as i860 by 

 Brown, and again in 1909 by Cranston Low in Scotland, no attention 

 has been seriously paid to the disease until recently, when Sambon 

 and one of us, searching through the British Islands, came across 

 cases in both Scotland and England, and it appears probable that 

 more definite information with regard to the spread of pellagra in 

 these islands will soon be forthcoming. The interest with regard to 

 these cases is that while it is impossible to mathematically exclude 

 all possibility that a patient had never tasted a grain of maize, still 

 it would be straining the maize hypothesis to an unjustifiable extent 

 to try to make it apply to all of these cases. It is interesting to 

 note that pellagra has been found as far north as the Shetland 

 Islands. Of late years quite a number of cases of pellagra have 

 been reported in the British Isles. 



Iceland. — -We have no information as to the presence of pellagia 

 in Iceland, with the sole exception of a statement by Holland that 



