Goldberger's war

by Alan M. Kraut

"Alan M. Kraut shows why Dr. Goldberger's life became, quite literally, the stuff of comic-book storyboards. On the front lines of the legendary public health battles of the early twentieth century, he fought the epidemics that were then routinely sweeping the nation - typhoid, yellow fever, and diphteria. In 1914, after successfully confronting (and often contracting) the germ-borne plagues of his day, he was assigned the mystery of pellagra, a disease whose cause and cure had eluded the world for centuries and which was then afflicting tens of thousands of Americans every year, particularly in the emerging "New South." Dispatched to find a medical solution to what prevailing wisdom assumed was another germ-borne disease, Goldberger discovered its cause in a dietary definiciency and spent years conducting experiments (some on himself and his family) to prove he was right. But finding the cause of pellagra was just half the fight; its cure required nothing less than challenging the eco