Asylum Doctor: James Woods Babcock and the Red Plague of Pellagra

Notes for Researchers

279 N o t e s f o r R e s e a r c h e r s This project began, continued, and ended with students, most recently two graduate students exploring the history and architecture of the Babcock Building. History like science often raises more questions than it answers, and it occurred to the author that it might be useful to suggest projects for researchers at various levels.The six linear feet of James Woods Babcock papers in the South Caroliniana Library were catalogued during the course of this project and the author has placed therein various databases , illustrations, and a finding aid for governmental publications.Twelve potential projects are as follows. The admission and discharge books of the South Carolina State Hospital for the Insane could be used to construct a database tracking individual patients. Researchers concerned about racial and gender disparities could analyze these data using present-day parameters such as length-of-stay and readmission rates, which might be of interest, especially if the archives of other asylums contain similar information. Pellagra in the United States has not been well told from the perspective of patients and their families. A student (Louis Miller) drew the author’s attention to the following reminiscence by a millworker: “The doctors patched me up.I was in a dread fix.Dr.Babcock treated me . . .I had pellagra inside and out. . . . the doctors can’t cure all the time.” The source was the Federal Writers’ Project (Library of Congress); this and other repositories could be mined for reminiscences of how patients, families, and communities coped with pellagra. N o t e s f o r R e s e a r c h e r s 280 Asylum Doctor To what extent,and at what rate,did American physicians change their opinions about the cause of pellagra after Joseph Goldberger’s breakthrough? The author’s database of 409 American authors of articles on pellagra published between 1907 and 1915,as referenced by the Index Medicus,could be extended. How many of these authors wrote on pellagra during the Goldberger era? Did they change their opinions? Did they campaign for better diets? Did they try to influence health officials and politicians? What happened behind the scenes at the Thompson-McFadden Pellagra Commission,from which Ward MacNeal emerged as Goldberger’s leading scientific opponent? Unfortunately, primary source materials have not been located.Separate collections of Ward J.MacNeal papers as indexed by the American Society for Microbiology and the University of Michigan are silent on this period of his life. In 1948 the New York Post-Graduate Medical School merged with New York University.An archivist at New York University searched diligently for materials pertaining to the ThompsonMcFadden Commission but turned up nothing of interest. Such material if found would allow a researcher to refine and/or challenge the present author’s narrative. Goldberger and his small team assumed a task that would now be undertaken by “Big Science”—large-scale efforts by well-funded groups and coalitions of researchers. Alan Kraut’s magisterial account of Goldberger’s herculean efforts could be a starting point for projects along at least three lines.First,the scientific dimensions could be explored in greater detail (see, for example,note 90,page 349).Could pellagra have been solved sooner? To what extent did Goldberger exchange ideas with other researchers within the U.S.Public Health Service (such as Atherton Seidell and Carl Voegtlin), elsewhere in the United States, and abroad? Second, social determinants of resistance to Goldberger’s conclusions could be contrasted with resistance to other new paradigms (familiar examples include Galileo, William Harvey, Darwin,and today’s controversy about global warming; for examples during the early twentieth century,see note 73,page 347).Finally,those interested in the organization of science could compare and contrast the initial American response to pellagra to responses to other threats to public health.To what extent did the pellagra story between 1907 and 1925 constitute a watershed event in the professionalization of American medical science? And is it correct to assert that never again would American medical researchers be duped by the likes of Louis Sambon? Of interest to the present author is the role played by practicing physicians in the advancement of knowledge.The arrival of Big Science during the mid-twentieth century markedly reduced the ability of practicing physicians Notes for Researchers 281 to...