Joseph Goldberger

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Joseph Goldberger: A doctor who linked pellagra to diet

Joseph Goldberger (1874–1929) was an American physician and epidemiologist with the U.S. Public Health Service. He argued that poverty and poor diet were connected to disease and worked to prove it.

Early life and career
Goldberger was born in Girált, Kingdom of Hungary (now Giraltovce, Slovakia) to a Jewish family. He moved to the United States with his parents in 1883 and settled in New York City. He studied at the City College of New York and then the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, earning his medical degree in 1895. He joined the U.S. Marine Hospital Service (later the Public Health Service) in 1899 and helped inspect immigrants at Ellis Island. He later worked in various public health roles, focusing on diseases like yellow fever, typhus, dengue, and typhoid.

Pellagra and a diet theory
In 1914, Goldberger was asked to study pellagra, a painful skin disease that was spreading in the Southern United States. At the time, many doctors believed it came from germs or bad conditions. Goldberger thought the disease was tied to diet, especially among poor people who relied on starch-heavy foods.

The big experiments
- Orphanages: With federal funding, he studied two groups of orphans—one sick with pellagra and one not. He gave the healthy group a varied diet (with meat, milk, eggs, and vegetables). After a few weeks, new cases stopped and most of the sick recovered.
- Georgia State Sanitarium: He set up an experiment with an experimental group receiving a better diet and a control group staying on the old diet. Over two years, the better-fed group improved a lot, while the control group remained sick.

Controversy and challenges
Goldberger also conducted a controversial study with prisoners at Rankin State Prison Farm to test his diet theory. He fed healthy prisoners a corn-based diet to see if pellagra would develop. Some prisoners showed symptoms, and the study drew strong political and ethical opposition. He also performed self-experiments to illustrate his points. Despite the pushback, his work strengthened the case that pellagra was linked to diet rather than being contagious.

What was learned
Goldberger never identified the exact nutrient missing from the diet. In 1937, scientists discovered that pellagra is caused by a deficiency of niacin (vitamin B3) and related factors. His research helped establish the link between diet, poverty, and disease and contributed to public health efforts to improve nutrition.

Death and legacy
Goldberger died of kidney cancer in Washington, D.C., in 1929 at age 54. He was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for his work on pellagra. His findings influenced public health and the understanding that poverty and diet matter for health. His papers are now housed at the National Library of Medicine. He was married to Mary Goldberger.