The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-29

From the Louisville Courier Journal.
 TT is announced by physicians that
 cases of pellagra have been discov- 4 cred in certain districts in the south, and the United States marine hospital ser vice is sending out Literature" concern ing this disease, which is said to be caused by eating musty or moldy corn.
 Pellagra is known in Europe under sev- eral names, including Lombardy leprosy and Alpine scurvy. There 1t takes the form of a kind of elephantiasis and manifests itself in recurrent attacks, or as a form of eczema. It Is believed to be the result of form of ptomaine poison resulting from the putrefaction of corn.
 There is a question as to whether the physicians who have diagnosed the all legged cases of peIlagra in the United States are right in their conclusions.
 In an article dealing with the distribu- tion of literature upon pellagra, the Washington Post says:
 'If the disease is due to musty corn, why has 1t waited 300 years to disclose itself? Why has it not appeared previously in the south, and especially in Mexico, where the people have been living mainly on corn for 1000 years or more, and on corn very carelessly prepared, ground and stored?
 ''It is noted as a coincidence that pei lagra appeared in Mississippi with the coming into the agricultural districts of the state of the Italian, in whose land the disease originated and among whom it is most prevalent and there is a sugges- ton that pellagrous Italians may have migrated to this country. The disease was first reported in America in 1885, when newly arrived Italian was found in New York hospital suffering from it. There is no suggestion by the phy- sicians that pellagra is contagious, al- though it was called of old Lombardy leprosy.'"
 It Is possible that if real pellagra ex- ists in the south it is an importation from southern Europe But, admitting that the physicians are right in attributing it to local causes, the standing of the corn pone will not be affected. Of course. we shouldn't eat corn meal when the process of putrefaction is advanced. Most of us would seek to avoid it even if pellagra were non-existent.
 few years ago the enterprising cor respondent of a New York newspaper at Suuedunc-or some other point the name of which is not readily recalled-tele- graphed to his paper a lurid account of the death of an individual who had eaten cabbage contaminated with poison from a new and deadly variety of serpent. The resident correspondents in various places
 saw their opportunity. Many newspapers and many physicians lent color to the cabbage snake story by gravely discussing the mythical reptile as one of the dangers of the day. Bottles containing every va | riety of "creepng, crawling thing" from a horsehair snake to a baby moccasin were solemnly examined by the scientists Good greasy cabbage was eschewed by the timorous to such an extent that the years crop was unmarketable. Of course the cabbage snake, like the whangdoodle, was purely imaginary monster, but he enjoyed a tenure of life about as long as | the more harmless kissing bug that four ished few years before.
 | Pellafra literature should not frighten l the southerner from his corn pone. He
 was fooled for time by the cabbage
 snake story, but nowadays he munches
 cabbage with pleasure, and with profit to
 his health. The feast is incomplete with
 out a supply of corn bread, made, of l course, from fresh meal.
 l Corn, as all North American Indians know, was gift to virtuous chftain l from Mondamin, god who knew a good | thing when he ate 1t. The Indians were | so contented with corn that they did not
 miss the benefits of civilization and con 1 tinued for uncounted centuries in happy | state of corn-fed savagery and perfect
 health, dying from time to time of scalp
 wounds, but never of pellagra.
 l Despite the cutworm who stood by to
 nip 1t in the bud, and the New Englander
 who spoke disparagingly of it because 1t | was not good material for the matutinal | pie, the cultivation of corn advanced l steadily with the advance of the Anglo
 Saxon from Plymouth in the direction of the Panhandle. and today the United