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Pellagra patients, Mogliano Veneto, end of the 19th Century beginning of the 20th Century.
G. Jankovich, albumen prints on cardboard
Patients of the first Italian pellagra ward opened in Mogliano Veneto (Treviso, North East of Italy) in 1882 at the presence of Lombroso whom for the occasion presented his theory on pellagra (then proved to be wrong): a pathology resulted from poor maize storage conditions, a disease that affected the poor whose diet was based on maize polenta especially in the North of Italy. Lombroso underlined the urgency of public intervention to help the population suffering from this illness that provoked diarrhoea, dermatitis and severe dementia and that was counting more than 100.000 cases.
Only around 1930 the real cause of this disease was finally discovered: the lack and bad absorption of group B vitamins.