Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, the Red Sea coast, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and among the Kaffirs and Zulus. Sand-with found it in 1900 among the coloured lunatics on Robben Island. Asia: Information is scanty, but it has been reported from Asia Minor and North Behar in India (Ray, 1902), Singapore, Philippine Islands. America: The United States, Mexico, Central America, Brazil, the Argentine, Barbados, and probably in other West India Islands. Australasia: Neirte has reported it in New Caledonia.
History.— The history of pellagra is comparatively recent. The disease was recognized and described almost simultaneously in Italy and Spain. In Spain it was first described by Casal in 1762 under the name of mal de la rosa. In Italy the disease, under the name of Alpine scurvy, was described by Odoardi in 1776, but it had been recognized previously by Pujati in 1740. Ramazzini, in 1700, writes of a disease under the name of mal del padrone, which appears to have been pellagra. Frapolli, who described the disease in 1771 under the name of pelagra (sic), says that probably it is the same as pellarella, a disorder mentioned as early as 1578 in the rules of admission to the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan.
The earliest mention of pellagra in France dates from 1829, when Hameau published an account of cases observed since 1818 around Teste-de-Buche and in the plain of Arcachon.
In Roumania the first recognition of the disease is assigned to the year 1836; in Corfu, to 1839.
We know nothing of the history of pellagra in Egypt prior to the publication of Pruner's " Topographie Médicale du Caire," in 1847. Pruner's statements were discredited by Hirsch and others, but recently Sandwith has shown that the disease is very prevalent in Lower Egypt, and also, though to a less extent, in Upper Egypt.
In the United States of America, although there is evidence of its sporadic occurrence there for a considerable time —at least fifty years— before its nature was recognized, pellagra was first diagnosed as such in 1907. It is prevalent especially in the south - eastern States. Dr. H. F. Harris, Health Officer of the Georgia State Board of Health, estimated that there were 50,000 cases of pellagra in his State alone.
Etiology. Sex.— Both sexes are liable, but in different places the disease exhibits a very different predilection for the one or other sex in accordance with the occupations and habits of the people, and
Spanish-derived name of "the rose," still now used in Scotland to indicate pellagra and other easily confounded erythematous conditions of the exposed parts.
