Epidemiologist and medical researcher, born in Giralt, Hungary. He went to the USA as a child. After taking his MD at New York City's Bellevue Hospital Medical College (1895), he joined the Public Health Service (1899). He investigated the mechanisms of spread of measles, typhus, typhoid, yellow fever, and other infectious diseases. Most notably, he demonstrated that pellagra, then common in the South, was caused by a vitamin B deficiency.
| Joseph Goldberger | |
|---|---|
| Dr. Joseph Goldberger | |
| Born |
July 16, 1874 Giralt, Hungary |
| Died |
January 17, 1929 Washington, D.C. Early lifeJoseph Goldberger was born in Girált, Hungary (now Giraltovce, Slovakia). Professional careerAfter setting-up a private medical practice in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania following his graduation, Goldberger became intellectually restless. From 1902–1906, Goldberger held a variety of epidimeology posts—from Mexico to Puerto Rico, and Mississippi to Louisiana—involving the PHS efforts to combat yellow fever, typhus, dengue fever, and typhoid fever. PellagraIn 1914, Goldberger was asked by the US Surgeon General, Rupert Blue, to investigate an endemic disease in the Southern US, pellagra. Goldberger's theory that pellagra was associated with diet contradicted the then commonly-held medical opinion that pellagra was an infectious disease. After multiple restricted diets experiments with different groups of volunteers spanning several years, Goldberger was able to demonstrate that individuals who consumed heavily corn-based diets (to the virtual exclusion of other foods) were at a greatly increased risk of contracting pellagra. Despite his careful experiments, Goldberger's discovery proved socially and politically untenable and he made little progress in securing support for treating pellagra. Joseph Goldberger died on January 17, 1929 from renal cell carcinoma. |
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