Solidified wine 2,000 years old : glimpses of life in the ancient city of Pompeii. Dr. Louis Sambon on wines and foods: an interesting interview / by J.V. Morton.

  • Morton, J. V.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Solidified wine 2,000 years old : glimpses of life in the ancient city of Pompeii. Dr. Louis Sambon on wines and foods: an interesting interview / by J.V. Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    broad and catholic a view of the etiology of disease or who has brought to bear on this subject so wide and intimate a knowledge not only of the literature but of the various branches of the Physical sciences bearing upon it.” A WINE SHOP SIGN-BOARD. In a taberna vinaria, or wine shop, not far from the Forum in Pompeii was found a terracotta sign-board representing two men carrying a wine amphora suspended from a pole. The Pellagra Problem. Dr. Sambon is a brilliant lecturer. I remember a fascinating address he gave at the Royal Society of Medicine. The day after, the President, Sir Humphry Rolleston, wrote to him : “ Your address was electric in its influence on the audience and the attractive theme of our inferiority to our ancestors most interesting.” The late Professor R. Blanchard, a great French parasitologist, in a letter to Le Temps, June 14, 1914, wrote : “ Dr. Sambon’s researches are well known at the Paris Faculty. Not only do I expound them every year in my lectures, but twice I have had the satisfaction of having them expounded by my excellent friend Dr. Sambon. On the last occasion, Monday, February 8, 1914, he had but recently returned from America, where he had been on behalf of the British Government. He brought back innumerable data which he consented to make known to the vast audience thronging my amphitheatre. During a whole hour he explained the pellagra problem with great elegance of- diction, with lucidity and master strokes which aroused the warmest applause. In thanking my learned friend for his splendid address—made extempore, and hence all the more interesting—I insisted on the importance of the epidemiological and parasito¬ logical problem he had placed before us.” With this newspaper cutting in my hand, I asked, “ What is pellagra ? ” Dr. Sambon replied:—“Pellagra is a grave periodic disease of scattered world-wide distribution, characterised by a peculiar rash affecting, as a rule, the exposed parts of the body, severe gastro-intestinal disturbances and progressive nervous and mental symptoms leading to insanity. Until quite recently, it was held, almost as a dogma, that pellagra was brought about by the ingestion of spoilt maize. I boldly impugned the accepted theory, and proved that Indian corn has nothing whatever to do with the causation of pellagra, which I consider to be an infectious disease, probably protozoal, transmitted from sick to well by some blood-sucking midge such as Cullicoides or Simulium. Think of it, insanity transmitted by the stab of an insect! Yet, however strange this may appear, my careful study of the epidemiology of pellagra points to insect transmission as clearly, as inevitably, as do the analogous epidemi¬ ological circumstances in better/known insect-borne diseases such as malaria, sleeping-sickness and yellow fever.” International Fame. In 1913, Dr. Sambon was invited by the Thompson- McFadden Pellagra Commission to visit the United States and inspect the intensive research work they were carrying out in South Carolina. On his arrival, a conference was improvised. “ Never before in the history of America has such a Pellagra Conference been held,” says the Spartanburg Herald, September 4, 1913, “ as that given in honour of Dr. Louis W. Sambon, of London, England, a man world-famed as an epidemiologist and a scientific investigator of international repute.” On his return to Europe, Dr. Sambon was invited to lecture on pellagra at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Professor A. Laveran, the famous discoverer of the malaria parasite, who presided, said : “ The researches which Dr. Sambon has been carrying out within recent years in different parts of the world on pellagra, its prevalence, distribution and causa¬ tion have already yielded very striking and highly interesting results which have signally ruined the exclusive maize theory of the disease.” After lecturing at the Institut Pasteur, Dr. Sambon had the further honour of being asked to address the French Academy of Medicine, and there, as Dr. H. Bianchon relates in the Figaro, he was acclaimed as the discoverer of the mode of transmission in both sleeping sickness and typhus, and delivered “ une conference infiniment interessante, une argumentation qui est un veritable modele du genre ” which was enthusiastically applauded. The pendulum of science constantly swings back¬ wards and forwards, and now the majority of physicians are again prating of deficiency of food and of lack of vitamines as possible causes of pellagra, without giving a thought to the natural history of the disease so thoroughly investigated by Dr. Sambon, who has also shown that, though more or less epidemiologically quiescent and hitherto unrecognised, pellagra is endemic throughout the British Isles. Studying Worm Parasites in the Zoo. Dr. Sambon’s studies on the protozoal and worm parasites affecting man and animals are far too numerous and technical for an outline of his life and work such as this; however, it should be mentioned that for over three years he voluntarily worked at the Gardens of the London Zoological Society, collecting and studying blood and intestinal parasites found in the dead animals brought to the Prosectorium for examination. His researches led to valuable publications^ especially on < the very little known migrations and activities of the larval forms of worms within the body of their respective hosts ; he published several papers on blood para¬ sites of snakes and birds, and a complete monograph A WINE STRAINER. This is one of the many kitchen utensils which came from the villa of Florus near Pompeii, now in the possession of Dr. Sambon. on tongue-worms. These strange, degraded vermi¬ form animals, closely related to the ticks and mites, live as adults in the lungs and air-passages of mammals, reptiles and fishes, while their larval stages are found encysted within the internal organs and tissues of animals preyed upon by the hosts of the mature forms.