Pellagra: The Epidemic that Did not Have to Happen

An epidemic of pellagra, a mysterious disease with no known cause or cure, occurred across the Southeastern U.S. during the first four decades of the 20th Century (Etheridge, E. (1972). The butterfly caste: A social history of pellagra in the South. Greenwood.). Although the disease had been common among peasants in Spain and Italy for at least two centuries, few cases were identified in the United States prior to 1900. Symptoms included a red scaly rash on the face, hands, and feet, diarrhea, dementia, and severe depression. Between 1900 and 1950 over three million cases of pellagra occurred in the United States with 100,000 resulting in death (Bollet, A. J. (1992). Politics and pellagra: the epidemic of pellagra in the US in the early twentieth century. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 65(3), 211. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2589605/pdf/yjbm00051-0058.pdf ). While epidemics are often unavoidable, the epidemic of pellagra that ravaged mill villages and tenant farms for four decades did not have to happen.