Joseph Goldberger (1874–1929) - American physician and epidemiologist who discover Niacin

Joseph Goldberger was born on July 16, 1874 in Giralt, Hungary, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were sheep herders, whose flock was decimated by sickness.

When he was 7 years old, his parents took him to the United States. The family settled in New York City, where his father opened a grocery.

Goldberger attended the city’s public schools and was graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1892. Goldberger then became a student at the Bellevue Hospital Medical School, graduating second in his class three years later in 1895.

Bored and intellectually restless in private practice in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the young, shy physician joined the United States Marine Hospital Service, (later the U.S. Public Health Service or PHS) in 1899 at the beginning rank of Assistant Surgeon. His early work with arriving immigrants at Ellis Island made him a standout investigator for detecting infectious diseases and he became a well-known epidemiologist

Between 1902 and 1907 Goldberger studied typhus and yellow fever in Cuba and in Mexico. Because of his ability in research, he was assigned in 1904 to the Hygienic Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

In 1909, he published his research on Shamberg's disease, an ailment characterized by continuous itching and elaborate skin eruptions similar to those of smallpox.

In 1914, Joseph Goldberger, a medical officer in the US Public Health Service was appointed by Surgeon General to lead the investigation of pellagra. By 1912, the state of South Carolina alone had reported 30,000 cases of pellagra, with a case fatality rate of 40%.

Joseph Goldberger's theory on pellagra contradicted commonly-held medical opinions. The work of Italian investigators as well as Goldberger's own observations in mental hospitals, orphanages, and cotton mill towns, convinced him that germs did not cause the disease.

He noticed that those caring for pellagra patients did not contract the disease. To prove that it could not be transmitted, he and a colleague injected themselves with blood from pellagra victims and suffered no ill effects.

In 1914 Goldberger designed and implemented two experiments to assess whether improving the diet of institutionalized children and adults would prevent pellagra They were deprived of milk and fresh meat. Within months, six had pellagra. An experiment with rats showed similar results.

He concluded that the disease was caused by the absence of some factor that was lacking in corn, but that could be found in meat and milk. He named it the P-P (for pellagra-preventative) factor.

In 1937 Conrad Arnold Elvehjem identified two vitamins, nicotinic acid, also known as niacin, and nicotinamide, which were deficient directly in human pellagra. He induced a black tongue in dogs by feeding them the Goldberger diet, and then cured the disease by supplementing their diet with nicotinic acid.
Joseph Goldberger (1874–1929) - American physician and epidemiologist who discover Niacin

Discovery of Vitamins B by Casimir Funk

Beriberi, was endemic for centuries and finally proved to be deficiency disease. In 1890 Eijkman developed a polyneuritis by feeding polished rice to hens. This was cured by feeding rice polishing by Dr. Casimir Funk in 1911.

Casimir Funk born in 1884, had grown up in a Poland that was then under a Russian government.

His father, a physician, was able to send Casimir at the age of sixteen to continue his studies in Switzerland, first in Geneva then moving to Berne to specialize in organic chemistry and obtain a doctoral degree at the early age of twenty.

He began his career in Warsaw before moved in 1904 to Pasteur Institute in Paris; then in 1906 to Berlin to work on amino acids and again in 1901 to the Lister Institute in London.

In London, he managed to extract from yeast a compound that was very effective against beriberi, which he called vitamin because its amine content,

He made a great advances in 1912 when he hypothesized that certain diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra and rickets are caused by deficiency of nutrients.

Casimir Funk coined the word “vitamine”. He describe an organic compound ‘thyamin’ as a ‘vital amine’ and it became known as vitamin B.

He believed that all these substance were ‘vital amines’, however, it was soon shown that most of the vitamins are unrelated chemically and that only a few of them are amines.

Later, as each vitamin was isolated in pure form and its chemical structure was determined, it was given a chemical name.
Discovery of Vitamins B by Casimir Funk