To Prove Pellagra Wasn’t a Germ, He And His Wife Ingested Patients’ Bodily Samples

Credits: jhssc.org

Do you know those doctors who stop at nothing and for whom their work and saving human lives comes before everything else? Joseph Goldberger was one of them, and his story is a story of incredible courage. It is 1916, in the deep South of the United States. A “disease”, pellagra, is claiming victims relentlessly: skin that darkens, minds that falter, bodies that collapse. Everyone thinks it is an invisible germ that transmits it, an infection to stay away from, and it is treated and cured as such.

Goldberger observes hospices and hospitals, notices that patients die while those who care for them remain healthy, so he does not believe it can be transmitted by germs. Something does not add up. Words and discussions are not enough, concrete proof is needed since the rest of the scientific community ignores him.

And so the search for evidence begins: he enriches the patients’ diets, obtaining improvements and recoveries, but this is not enough. He then conducts experiments on prisoners. He feeds them the extremely poor diet he suspects to be the real cause: corn, molasses, salted meat... and in a few weeks they fall ill and die. It is a clear proof of evidence, unmistakabl... this showed pellagra is not a germ: it is a lack of nutrients.

But people do not want to believe it. Admit that misery kills people? Too uncomfortable. So Goldberger raises the bar: he decides to test everything on his own skin to provide incontrovertible proof. He and his wife Mary eat samples taken from the most seriously ill patients: scabs, pus, blood. Kneaded and swallowed. And neither of them gets sick.

The truth is before everyone’s eyes: there is no germ, there is hunger and a lack of nutrients. By changing diets, patients improve. But science and politics take decades to follow that truth. Goldberger dies in 1929, without seeing the result of his work, without any recognition. Only years later, with vitamin B3 and food enrichment, pellagra truly begins to disappear. Millions of lives saved... and no one celebrates him.

What makes one reflect every time is this: sometimes the solution is there, right under our noses, clear as day. But it takes courage and stubbornness to look it in the face. And not everyone has it.