3. Joseph Goldberger and pellagra
Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of niacin (Vitamin B3) which presents painfully inflamed skin, mouth sores, severe diarrhea and dementia. In 1906 an epidemic of pellagra broke out in the American south which lasted into World War II. By 1912 the death rate from pellagra reached 40% in some southern regions. In 1914 the Surgeon General of the United States asked Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a distinguished American epidemiologist, to study the disease and seek a cure. Goldberger arranged to conduct studies in several southern orphanages and asylums. Following those he conducted a controlled study at Rankin State Prison Farm in Mississippi, offering pardons to volunteers who allowed themselves to be infected with blood from pellagra victims.
Goldberg recognized the causes of pellagra as diet-related, though his views were rejected in southern political circles. In order to prove his theory once and for all, he injected 16 volunteers, himself one of them, with pellagra infected blood. He developed severe diarrhea and nausea, as did the others, but none contracted the disease. His critics remained unimpressed. Goldberg continued to research the specific link between diet and pellagra and presented his findings, though the absence of a specific link left him unable to convince the medical and scientific community. He died of renal cancer in 1929. Eight years later the link between pellagra and niacin was established. Today pellagra is rare outside of the developing world.