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    Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat
    Unavailable
    Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat
    Unavailable
    Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat
    Ebook262 pages2 hours

    Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat

    By Gail Jarrow

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    One hundred years ago, a mysterious and alarming illness spread across America’s South, striking tens of thousands of victims. No one knew what caused it or how to treat it. People were left weak, disfigured, insane, and in some cases, dead. Award-winning science and history writer Gail Jarrow tracks this disease, commonly known as pellagra, and highlights how doctors, scientists, and public health officials finally defeated it. Illustrated with 100 archival photographs, Red Madness includes stories about real-life pellagra victims and accounts of scientific investigations. It concludes with a glossary, timeline, further resources, author’s note, bibliography, and index.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBoyds Mills Press
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781629792156
    Unavailable
    Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat

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    Reviews for Red Madness

    4/5

    22 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A well-researched, compellingly told medical mystery about the baffling epidemic outbreaks of pellagra that plagued the U.S. in early 20th century. Grim photographs of victims and graphic descriptions of symptoms are great booktalk material.
    • 4/5
      In the early 1900s, the United States and in particular southern states were hit with a sudden outbreak of pellagra, a disease evident in a rash, digestive problems, and - before causing death - a breaking down of the nervous system. The first known case in the United States was a shock to doctors - it was thought to be caused by "bad corn" and primarily a disease of the European poor. But as more and more doctors realized their patients' cases were pellagra, a race to the cure and cause was on.This is a treatment of the disease, its cause and cure, intended for young adult audiences. Given the repetitiveness of some of the text and the simple sentence structure, I might even bump it down a little younger to middle grade. It kept my interest enough to read the story, though it's not a topic I'm typically interested in. I wanted to read the book more for the subtitle "How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat," but this was more the story of the medical mystery than diet change, which was only addressed at the very end of the book. I did enjoy the layout, which included a chronological retelling of individuals with the disease interspersed with the narrative of finding pellagra's cause and lots of photographs. The recounting of the experiments done to determine this was compelling.
    • 5/5
      At the turn of the 20th century, tens of thousands of Americans developed a mysterious illness with symptoms ranging from disfigurement to insanity to death. Jarrow traces the unraveling of a terrifying medical mystery as she details how doctors, scientists, and public health officials determined the cause of the illness, commonly known as pellagra, against a backdrop of culture, politics, and Progressivism. Illustrated with 100 archival photographs, Jarrow has also included vignettes of real life pellagra victims and accounts of the scientific investigations. It concludes with a glossary, timeline, further resources, author’s note, bibliography, and index.
    • 4/5
      I don't read a lot of nonfiction anymore, but this was quite interesting. We are so used to our food being enriched with vitamins and minerals, that I doubt we even notice it on the labels. Red Madness explains with news accounts, pictures, and good research why our food is the way it is today.