Red Madness
How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat
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- US$10.99
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One hundred years ago, a mysterious and alarming illness spread across America's South, striking tens of thousands of victims. No one knew what caused it or how to treat it. People were left weak, disfigured, insane, and in some cases, dead.
Award-winning science and history writer Gail Jarrow tracks this disease, commonly known as pellagra, and highlights how doctors, scientists, and public health officials finally defeated it. Illustrated with 100 archival photographs, Red Madness includes stories about real-life pellagra victims and accounts of scientific investigations. It concludes with a glossary, timeline, further resources, author's note, bibliography, and index. This book is perfect to share with young readers looking for a historical perspective of the Covid-19/Coronavirus pandemic that is gripping the world today.
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Jarrow (The Amazing Harry Kellar: Great American Magician) takes readers on a medical detective journey full of dead ends, twists, politics, and culture as she details the story of pellagra, a deadly disease caused by niacin deficiency. Prevalent in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, it primarily struck the impoverished in the South (where cotton had displaced nutritious food crops). The disease causes a patterned red rash, intestinal distress, dementia, and eventually death. The author's extensive research turns up personal stories within the story; interspersed throughout are brief vignettes of "pellagrins" like Mrs. A. Sallie Graham, a 55-year-old Virginia woman whose "health had been good until she developed a skin irritation that wouldn't go away.... After six months, she began to forget things and wondered if she might be going insane." These individual accounts create an urgent backdrop of suffering and death for the story of the epidemiological quest to find a cause and cure. Archival photos of sufferers of all ages are poignant and graphic. A FAQ, timeline and glossary conclude the captivating tale, which pinpoints the reason bread is enriched today. Ages 10 up.
