Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/498

476 P E L poverty. For a time he was confined as a debtor in the King s Bench prison. He lived, on the invitation of Dr Whistler, for a short time in 1682 at the College of Physi cians, but died 12th December 1685 at the house of Mr Cothorne, reader of the church of St Giles in the Fields. He was buried at the expense of the rector of this church and of Dr Busby, the master of Westminster School. Many of Pell s manuscripts fell into the hands of Dr Busby, and afterwards came into the possession of the Royal Society ; they are still preserved in something like forty folio volumes, which contain, not only Pell s own memoirs, but much of his correspondence with the mathe maticians of his time. The Diopliantinc analysis was a favourite subject with Pell ; he lectured on it at Amsterdam ; and he is now best remembered for his solution of the indeterminate equation, ax~ y- = , which is now known by his name, and which had been proposed by Fermat as a challenge to the English mathematicians. His chief works are Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances, 163-4 ; Ediptica Prognostica, 1634 ; Controversy with Longomontanm concerning the Quadrature of the Circle, 1646 (?) ; An, Idea of the Mathematics, 12mo, 1650 ; Branker s Translation of Ehonius s Algebra, imich altered and augmented, 4to, 1668 ; A Table of Ten Thousand Square Numbers, fol., 1672. PELLA. See MACEDONIA, vol. xv. p. 137. PELLAGRA (Ital. pelle agra, smarting skin) is the name given, from one of its early symptoms, to a peculiar disease, of comparatively modern origin, occurring among the peasantry, in Lombardy and other provinces of northern Italy, and in the Asturias (inal de la rosa), Gascony, Roumania, and Corfu. It is a progressive disease of nutri tion tending towards profound paralytic and mental dis orders, and is associated to a very significant extent, if not even invariably, with a staple diet of damaged maize along with other peculiarly wretched and hopeless con ditions of living. Although Lombardy is the garden of Italy, its peasantry are over- worked, under-paid, and under fed ; instead of a diet suited to their severe labour, their sustenance consists largely of the more worthless kinds of Indian corn of their own growing, the produce of poorly- cultivated ground, sown late, harvested before maturity, and stored carelessly in its wet state ; even if they grow a certain proportion of good maize-corn the millers, to whom they are often in debt, are more likely to grind the worst samples for the peasants own use. The flour is either made into a kind of porridge the "polenta" of Italy, the "cruchade" of Gascony, or the "mamaliga" of Roumania or it is made into loaves, without yeast, baked hastily on the surface only or on one side, and raw and wet within, large enough to last a week, and apt to turn sour and mouldy before the week is out. 1 That pellagra is not a morbus miseries pure and simple, wanting some more specific cause, will be at once apparent when we consider that the misery of living is as old as the human race, whereas pellagra is a disease of the last hundred years or so, and that in Ireland, Russia, Upper Silesia, Galicia, or other headquarters of the morbi miserise, 1 Of the peasantry of the Asturias, Townsend, a traveller of the last century, says : "They eat little flesh, they drink little wine; their usual diet is Indian corn, with beans, peas, chestnuts, apples, pears, melons, and cucumbers ; and even their bread, ro.ade of Indian corn, has neither barm nor leaven, but is unfermented, and in the state of dough ; their drink is water" (ii. 14). The following is the most recent account (by Dr Petit) of the condition of the peasantry in the pellagrous district of the Gironde : " The cultivation of this district consists of millet, rye, a small quantity of maize, and a few rare vineyards. The soil does not suffice for the nourishment of the miserable population who cultivate it. They are slovenly, and sleep in their clothes ; their labour is in general of the severest kind, and they are very ill fed. Their food is mostly a porridge of millet ; maize is rarely part of their diet [elsewhere he says, " in all these provinces the flour of maize enters largely into the food of the people"), which includes a little rye-bread, sour most of the time, a few sardines, and rancid lard. Meat is almost excluded from their food ; sometimes on fete-days one may see a quarter of mutton or veal at the repast. Their usual drink is water, and mostly bad water ; wine is not drunk except in well-to-do families. Their dwellings are deplorable ; they are low- roofed and damp, built of wattle, and constantly enveloped in reek. It often happens that man and beast live together. Pellagra rages as an endemic among these populations." pellagra is unknown. The special factor is undoubtedly maize as an article of diet or as the staple diet ; but it is, on the other hand, perfectly clear that there is nothing in a maize diet itself to induce pellagra. Compared with the enormous extent of the maize-zone both in the western and eastern hemispheres, the pellagra-area is a mere spot on the map ; excluding Corfu, it lies between the parallels of 46 and 42 N. ; and the exception of Corfu is a signi ficant one. It is only since 1856 that pellagra ha,:, become endemic in that island. Maize has always thriven well there ; but wine-growing has displaced it to a great extent, and the maize, which is still largely in request with the peasantry, is now mostly imported ; it is in fact chiefly Roumanian maize of an inferior kind, and all the more deteriorated owing to its long water-transit by way of the Danube and Black Sea. Again, in the Danubian provinces themselves the peasantry of Transylvania, who are by no means well off, are free from pellagra, notwithstanding their addiction to polenta, having long ago learned the art of husbandry from the Saxon part of the population ; they allow the maize to ripen to the utmost, and then let it dry on the ground and afterwards in barns, whereas the Wallack peasantry of Roumania, who are subject to pellagra, gather the corn before it is ripe, and shoot it into pits where it becomes musty. In other countries where the conditions of climate and soil are somewhat trying for maize, as in Burgundy, Franche Comte, and the Bresse in France, and in Mexico, the greatest care is taken to dry the Indian corn before it is stored ; and it may be said that wherever these precautions are taken pellagra does not follow. It has happened on several occasions, after a particularly bad maize-harvest, that pellagra has risen almost to an epidemic. Again, its prevalence within its actual endemic area varies much from province to province or from commune to com mune, being always last where the maize-diet is supple mented by wheaten flour, rice, beans, chestnuts, potatoes, or fish. Characters of the Disease. The indications of pellagra usually begin in the spring of the year, declining towards autumn, and recurring with increasing intensity and per manence in the spring seasons following. A peasant who is acquiring the malady feels unfit for work, suffers from headaches, giddiness, singing in the ears, a burning of the skin, especially in the hands and feet, and diarrhoea. At the same time a red rash appears on the skin, of the nature of erysipelas, the red or livid spots being tense and painful, especially where they are directly exposed to the sun. About July or August of the first season these symptoms disappear, the spots on the skin remaining rough and dry. The spring attack of the year following will probably be more severe and more likely to leave traces behind it ; with each successive year the patient becomes more like a mummy, his skin shrivelled and sallow, or even black at certain spots, as in Addison s disease, his angles protruding, his muscles wasted, his movements slow and languid, and his sensibility diminished. Meanwhile there are more special symptoms relating to the nervous system, including drooping of the eyelid, dilatation of the pupil, and other disorders of vision, together with symptoms relating to the digestive system, such as a red and dry tongue, a burning feeling in the mouth, pain on swallowing, and diarrhoea. Peasants with this progressive malady upon them come to the towns spring after spring seeking relief at the various hospitals, and under a good regimen and a permanently improved diet the malady is often checked. But after a certain stage the disease is confirmed in a pro found disorganization of the nervous system ; spasms of the limbs begin to occur, and contractures of the joints from partial paralysis of the extensor muscles and pre ponderant action of the flexors ; melancholy, imbecility,