EAN: 9783031224980

MENTAL HEALTH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE PELLA...

This open access book explores the history of pellagra  a vitamin deficiency disease brought
about by a shift in agriculture to maize  and which was first identified in Italy in the 1760s.
With a focus on the insanity that was caused by the disease  the authors examine how thousands
of patients were treated in Italian psychiatric asylums  shedding light on the sufferer's point
of view. Setting pellagrous insanity in a wider context of man-made or societal (anthropogenic)
disease  where poverty  diet and disease meet  the book contributes to the history of medicine
and science  the history of psychiatry  economic and social history  agrarian history  and food
and nutrition history. Additionally  the authors aim to transnationalise Italian history by
making comparisons with related issues  such as tertiary syphilis in the UK. Drawing from a
wide range of printed and archival sources  including the writings of Italian medical
investigators  the book examines how medical and scientific research was carried out during the
long nineteenth century and the uncertainties that this engendered  in terms of classification
explanation  diagnosis and treatment. Offering a unique perspective on an endemic illness which
came to be known as the disease of the four ds: dermatitis  diarrhea  dementia  and death  this
book provides an engaging account of one of the most perplexing causes of mental illness.

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