Joseph Goldberger

Joseph Goldberger (* July 16, 1874 in Giraltovce (Hungarian Giralt ), Eastern Slovakia (then Hungary), † January 17, 1929 in Washington, DC, United States) was an American physician. Together with colleagues, he proved the beginning of the 20th century that both the so-called pellagra of man and the black tongue disease of the dog by a deficiency of nicotinic acid, a vitamin of the B complex, arise. Before that, the favored germs from cause.

At age six, he emigrated with his family to the United States a - his parents had a Shop in the East Side of Manhattan. From 1890 he studied at City College in New York. First, he wanted to be an engineer, but then switched to medicine with an MD degree from the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1895. Initially, he practiced as a physician in a small town in Pennsylvania, but was bored there and applied for a job at the Marine Hospital Service, which he took after a competitive examination 1899. There he was ( primarily for Seafarers) involved in the control of infectious diseases. In 1902, he was renamed Public Health Service and increasingly devoted himself to the basic research to infection. 1914 Goldberger was entrusted with the investigation of pellagra by the Surgeon General, the in the poor communities of the southern United States was endemic due to unilateral corn and molasses diet. Goldberger soon realized that it was not an infectious disease but a consequence of incorrect diet. To this end he undertook nutritional experiments with volunteers from a prison in Mississippi. His findings then met with any resistance, some one threw him a man from the northern states prejudices against the lifestyle of the southerners before.

Goldberger tried the rest of his career, to find the food ingredient, the lack of which caused pellagra, but died in 1929 of cancer, before the cause was found. This was Conrad Elvehjem 1937, who proved that it was based on niacin deficiency.

Writings

• The etiology of pellagra: The Significance of Certain epidemiological observations with respect thereto. Public Health Rep. 1914, 29 (26 ) :1683 -86.
• With Waring CH, Tanner WF: Pellagra prevention by diet among institutional inmates. Public Health Rep. 1923, 38 (41 ) :2361 - 68th
• With Wheeler GA: The experimental production of pellagra in human subjects by Means of diet. Hygienic Laboratory Bulletin. 1920; 120:7-116.