Is this an old carney with oil-slick tattoos?
Nope, it's a man with pellagra.
This was the Scourge of the South, and came from having a corn-based diet. It had a 40% fatality rate. A Dr. Goldberger of the National Health Service figured out that it wasn't caused by germs but by nutrition. They had an educational campaign to alert people, and when my dad was a kid in the 30's, a worker came out to the house to talk to my grandmother about it. He said to mix up the diet and replace some corn with rice, amongst other things. So instead of grits and eggs in the mornings, she fed her ten kids rice and eggs. My father says they were very unusual, with their rice-eating.
There's supposed to be a movie in the works about it, with Jeff Goldblum playing Dr. Goldberger.
Posted by floridacracker at December 28, 2003 10:28 AM