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Thursday, February 05, 2004Angry and frustrated, Goldberger would not give up trying to persuade his critics that pellagra was a dietary disorder, not an infectious disease. He hoped that one final dramatic experiment would convince his critics. On April 26, 1916 he injected five cubic centimeters of a pellagrin's blood into the arm of his assistant, Dr. George Wheeler. Wheeler shot six centimeters of such blood into Goldberger. Then they swabbed out the secretions of a pellagrin's nose and throat and rubbed them into their own noses and throats. They swallowed capsules containing scabs of pellagrins' rashes. Others joined what Goldberger called his 'filth parties,' including Mary Goldberger. [the doctor's wife -ed.] None of the volunteers got pellagra. Despite Goldberger's heroic efforts, a few physicians remained staunch opponents of the dietary theory of pellagra. We now know that a niacin or tryptophan deficiency causes pellagra. It was especially prevalent in the South where the ravages of the Civil War had left a good deal of the population in poverty and starvation. But, Southerners were loathe to admit they couldn't feed their own, least of all when that suggestion was made by a Northeastern Jewish immigrant. He died before he could see his theory vindicated. posted by Sydney on 2/05/2004 07:32:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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