“The Ugly Disease of Poverty”. Descriptions, Reports and Socio-Medical Measures to Combat Pellagra in Bukovina, 1890-1914
“The Ugly Disease of Poverty”. Descriptions, Reports and Socio-Medical Measures to Combat Pellagra in Bukovina, 1890-1914

Summary/Abstract: The health situation and the functioning of the Austrian Bukovina health system remain poorly understood due to the marginalization of the topic as well as the limited study of primary source material related to this time frame and region. Although scattered in the archives of Romania or those of Ukraine (Cernăuţi/Chernivtsi), in the regional press and popularization works specific to the beginning of the 20th century, the material concerning the variety of diseases (many of them infectious, with fatal effects among the population) is rich and instrumental in understanding the knowledge the historical specificities of the easternmost province of the monarchy. Based on such diverse information from the archives of Suceava and the press of the time, the article proposes to shed light on one of the most challenging “social diseases” of the time, namely pellagra. It presents the conditions and appearance of the disease, its symptoms and phases of manifestation (as described by several doctors from Cernăuţi and Suceava) and how the doctors and political authorities of the time adopted medical and social “sanitation” measures. The successes and setbacks in what had been dubbed the “Fight against Pellagra” (Bekampfung der Pellagra) for several decades point to the potential for examining the topic from the perspective of social history, ethnohistory, medical history, historical demography, and rural history, thus offering ideas for new investigations.

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