Less than a decade has elapsed since Goldberger and his associates began their studies of pellagra in this country. The developments of these investigations furnish an illustration of how significant knowledge of the etiology of disease may be for its proper management. If pellagra was due to an infection, as seemed to be the case to many students of the subject ten years ago, the public duty in the direction of prevention obviously lay in the introduction and enforcement of such sanitary measures as are accustomed to be efficacious in the face of infectious disease. The foremost need was to discover and eradicate the biologic agent that was involved. Problems of segregation and quarantine would need to be considered; in fact, drastic measures involving isolation of patients were actually adopted in some instances. This sort of procedure was likely to be superfluous if the etiologic factor lay in the diet—in circumstances wherein the individual rather than his hygienic surroundings was primarily concerned.
