Hard tack, corn pone, and pellagra

[Allie]

The recent thread on cornbread recipes brought this to my mind.

I've been researching the lives of people who were enslaved on my ancestor's plantation in Lauderdale county. I recently learned that several ex-slaves who remained on the plantation as sharecroppers died in the 1920's or 30's of pellagra, which led me to read more about pellagra. I bumped into a theory about the Civil War which I haven't seen discussed here before.

What is pellagra? It's a vitamin deficiency disease caused by lack of niacin, which causes peeling skin, mental confusion, weakness, diarrhea, and eventually death. Because of the peeling skin, it was sometimes thought of as a variety of leprosy.

Niacin is found in wheat, but not in corn (maize), unless the corn is treated with lime in a process called nixtamalization - which was commonly practiced by many Native Americans who relied on corn as a staple. When Europeans adopted the use of maize, they did not also adopt this process because the benefits were not understood, so their corn was niacin deficient. Enslaved Africans followed the same practices. Not until 1938 was the link between niacin deficiency and pellagra widely understood. But long before that time, the link between a staple diet of corn and pellagra had been noticed. It was believed that eating corn somehow caused the disease, possibly through insects, or a toxin, or a disease which lived on the corn. But the true culprit was a diet in which corn was the exclusive grain.

Now, here's the speculative part. During the Civil War, typical Union army rations involved hard tack, made from wheat. Confederate rations often substituted cornmeal.

This starts looking significant when you note that human experiments in the 1920's found that although it took five months of an exclusive corn-based diet for the classic lesions of pellagra to develop, confusion, weakness, headaches, and lethargy developed within two weeks. That means that despite Confederate medical records that state pellagra was unknown in the Confederate army, it's quite possible that many Confederate soldiers were suffering the early stages without anyone being aware.

Early stage pellagra has many systemic effects. It does a number on the immune system. And mental confusion doesn't sound like a good idea for a soldier.

Unfortunately I can't recall where I read this - perhaps someone else will know - but I remember reading the diary of a Union hospital matron who was shocked by the difference in how Confederate and Union soldiers responded to amputation. Many more Confederates died.

How much of an effect did early-stage pellagra have on the health and effectiveness of Confederate soldiers?

The other link between pellagra and the Civil War is that descriptions of deaths at Andersonville prison - where rations were notoriously poor - often resemble pellagra. A 1912 book by George Mccallum Niles, Pellagra: an American Problem, discusses interviews with several veterans who described symptoms identical to pellagra.

I found it interesting that pellagra was widely believed among doctors of the period NOT to have surfaced until after the war - certainly it wasn't recognized.

 

[James B White]

Hominy prevented niacin deficiency because it was treated with lye, but if soldiers were getting rations of corn taken straight to the mill and ground, which they most likely were, I could see they could begin to suffer from pellagra if they weren't getting niacin from another source. However, their situation may not have been as bad as later.

The following is from http://m.content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/6/1734.full

"In retrospect, a change in the way that cornmeal was processed for market most likely explains the sudden appearance of pellagra. Midwestern corn was increasingly processed in large mills, packaged in bulk, and shipped by railroad throughout the country. In the first decade of the twentieth century these mills installed new machines, which removed much of the corn germ to increase the meal's shelf life. It also reduced the small amount of available niacin in cornmeal by as much as 40 percent. Institutions bought their cornmeal in bulk from these Midwestern mills, and the loss of niacin tipped vulnerable, otherwise malnourished populations over the edge into pellagra."

The following article from medscape at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410505_4 says essentially the same thing:

"The answer to the problem lay in the methodology of corn processing, cooking, and milling.[36] The natives of Mexico and Central America had always soaked the corn in alkali before cooking. [The author fails to mention that poor southerners were making hominy the same way too in the antebellum period.] The alkali treatment liberates the bound niacin in corn, thereby enhancing the niacin content of the diet to the point of being protective against pellagra. The process of degerming in the preparation of cornmeal became feasible with the development of the Beall degerminator in 1905.[36] The process of degermination reduces the niacin content of corn and could have precipitated the development of pellagra among a vulnerable population."

At Andersonville, soldiers complained they were getting poorly bolted cornmeal, with ground corncob included. While that made it less nutritious per pound or quart than ground corn alone, it also hints they were getting the full corn germ, which might have contained some niacin--though I don't know how soon pellagra would show up anyway on malnourished men, many of whom couldn't absorb all the nutrition anyway due to diarrhea and dysentery.

The ex-slaves may have eaten plantation-made hominy in early times, and that would surely have prevented pellagra, but even corn ground on older milling equipment might have avoided it. Sounds like the 1920s-30s would be about the time things woud have changed.

Here's an article on slave diets and pellagra: http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/01/slave-diet-low-in-niacin-causes.html One thing the author omits, and which I don't know the answer to, is how much true, lye-soaked hominy was still made on plantations in the antebellum era. While some plantations would obviously be purchasing cornmeal from a mill (though still not the 20th century mills that caused even less niacin), I wonder how much hominy was made on-site?

Here are some quick and easy examples of slaves from the WPA project remembering making classic hominy, which would be the very tail end of the antebellum era, when it would be most apt to be fading: https://books.google.com/books?id=iU8GyhJ1veEC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=slave diet hominy&source=bl&ots=pOZt8DjfWj&sig=ukXLaG7nnGWDuZddSg2_sPLiquY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Hx6uVPylKomXyAT-poGoAw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBQ The problem is that people still called things "hominy" out of habit even if it wasn't true lye or alkali-soaked corn, but I figure someone somewhere has worked on the problem of how much hominy was still being made.

 

[FarawayFriend]

Most interesting and fascinating! Thank you for these posts!

 

[donna]

Very interesting.

 

[Allie]

Hominy prevented niacin deficiency because it was treated with lye, but if soldiers were getting rations of corn taken straight to the mill and ground, which they most likely were, I could see they could begin to suffer from pellagra if they weren't getting niacin from another source. However, their situation may not have been as bad as later.

The following is from http://m.content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/6/1734.full

"In retrospect, a change in the way that cornmeal was processed for market most likely explains the sudden appearance of pellagra. Midwestern corn was increasingly processed in large mills, packaged in bulk, and shipped by railroad throughout the country. In the first decade of the twentieth century these mills installed new machines, which removed much of the corn germ to increase the meal's shelf life. It also reduced the small amount of available niacin in cornmeal by as much as 40 percent. Institutions bought their cornmeal in bulk from these Midwestern mills, and the loss of niacin tipped vulnerable, otherwise malnourished populations over the edge into pellagra."

The following article from medscape at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410505_4 says essentially the same thing:

"The answer to the problem lay in the methodology of corn processing, cooking, and milling.[36] The natives of Mexico and Central America had always soaked the corn in alkali before cooking. [The author fails to mention that poor southerners were making hominy the same way too in the antebellum period.] The alkali treatment liberates the bound niacin in corn, thereby enhancing the niacin content of the diet to the point of being protective against pellagra. The process of degerming in the preparation of cornmeal became feasible with the development of the Beall degerminator in 1905.[36] The process of degermination reduces the niacin content of corn and could have precipitated the development of pellagra among a vulnerable population."

At Andersonville, soldiers complained they were getting poorly bolted cornmeal, with ground corncob included. While that made it less nutritious per pound or quart than ground corn alone, it also hints they were getting the full corn germ, which might have contained some niacin--though I don't know how soon pellagra would show up anyway on malnourished men, many of whom couldn't absorb all the nutrition anyway due to diarrhea and dysentery.

The ex-slaves may have eaten plantation-made hominy in early times, and that would surely have prevented pellagra, but even corn ground on older milling equipment might have avoided it. Sounds like the 1920s-30s would be about the time things woud have changed.

Here's an article on slave diets and pellagra: http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/01/slave-diet-low-in-niacin-causes.html One thing the author omits, and which I don't know the answer to, is how much true, lye-soaked hominy was still made on plantations in the antebellum era. While some plantations would obviously be purchasing cornmeal from a mill (though still not the 20th century mills that caused even less niacin), I wonder how much hominy was made on-site?

Here are some quick and easy examples of slaves from the WPA project remembering making classic hominy, which would be the very tail end of the antebellum era, when it would be most apt to be fading: https://books.google.com/books?id=iU8GyhJ1veEC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=slave diet hominy&source=bl&ots=pOZt8DjfWj&sig=ukXLaG7nnGWDuZddSg2_sPLiquY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Hx6uVPylKomXyAT-poGoAw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBQ The problem is that people still called things "hominy" out of habit even if it wasn't true lye or alkali-soaked corn, but I figure someone somewhere has worked on the problem of how much hominy was still being made.

Although a single anecdote isn't proof of anything, I have a friend whose parents were black sharecroppers (tobacco) in Fayette county, and they still made their own hominy in the 1970s. They also gathered and ate pokeweed (poisonous unless cooked properly), which suggests the survival of traditional methods of food preparation. I can remember the area where she lived, although it's been replaced by McMansions now. I'm pretty sure the houses back there never did have electricity.

 

[Nathanb1]

Good thread! One of the problems was that (generally), corn was the grain of choice in the South...wheat tends to grow better, for instance, in central to north Texas....a climate thing! Anyway, this left people at risk for....you guessed it. Pellagra. In fact, I had a cousin who died in the 1920's of just that disease.

My mother loved nothing better than poke salad in the spring. Ech. But her family's food was definitely traditional deep South and rural farm food.

 

[E_just_E]

From the early 1900s until WWII between 3-4 million Americans, most of them in the South were affected by pellagra and about a twentieth or so died. And most in the South. And was not an ACW effect, as lieutenant White indicated up there, it was due to the removal of the germ, in the 20th century. Before that was fine and the natives were living fine on corn for eons.

 

[Billy_Mojo]

<3 I love this! many thanks!

 

[ErnieMac]

Interesting. I've read a number of accounts noting differences in the appearance of dead Confederate and Union soldiers on the battlefield noting discoloration and skin condition among other things. I have usually tended to discount these accounts, but now wonder if these accounts are factual with nutrition accounting for the observed differences.

 

[reading48]

Interesting post.....

 

[diane]

I know the method of growing Indian corn was to plant beans and squash together with the corn. The three plants compliment each other - one provides nitrogen to the soil, one keeps off bugs, the squash shades out weeds and so on. But the beans provide the niacin and are usually eaten with the corn - succotash, for instance. Or beans and corn tortillas. It seems to me a lot of the Southern soldiers got the cornmeal and the bacon but beans weren't normally issued.

 

[Barrycdog]

Although a single anecdote isn't proof of anything, I have a friend whose parents were black sharecroppers (tobacco) in Fayette county, and they still made their own hominy in the 1970s. They also gathered and ate pokeweed (poisonous unless cooked properly), which suggests the survival of traditional methods of food preparation. I can remember the area where she lived, although it's been replaced by McMansions now. I'm pretty sure the houses back there never did have electricity.

I used to pick poke salad. Young tender shoots. Past that and its poison.

 

[Allie]

I used to pick poke salad. Young tender shoots. Past that and its poison.

You can actually eat it later if you boil it long enough in several changes of water. Or so I'm told. I wouldn't, myself.

Old pokeweed is the best thing to have fake swordfights with as a kid, though!

 

[Barrycdog]

I noticed in the newspapers they did not mention the disease till 1906-1909. It seemd then to be an epidemic

 

[Allie]

I noticed in the newspapers they did not mention the disease till 1906-1909. It seemd then to be an epidemic

The doctor who wrote the 1912 book seems convinced it existed before then but wasn't being diagnosed. It was first recognized as pellagra, rather than another illness, in Italy in the 1860s.

Diane brings up a good point about the beans. You have to be really poor to get pellagra, because there are several non-grain based sources. Let's face it, a rural southerner who can't even grow peas is not doing well for himself.

It's interesting to think that refining processes were sucking all the foysin out of food without people noticing it.

 

[Barrycdog]

I am a diabetic and realizing that diabetes is largely related to diet. You think about how different our diet is today compared to back then. They start out with bacon, salt pork and butter as being bad and then later discover the low carb quality of it. Today we don't have real food anymore. Even the tomatoes are fake. I love tomatoes but the store bought ones you could play racket ball with and not damage.

 

[Allie]

I am a diabetic and realizing that diabetes is largely related to diet. You think about how different our diet is today compared to back then. They start out with bacon, salt pork and butter as being bad and then later discover the low carb quality of it. Today we don't have real food anymore. Even the tomatoes are fake. I love tomatoes but the store bought ones you could play racket ball with and not damage.

I have better luck in the winter buying "heirloom" tomatoes at the fancy market. Winter tomatoes are bound to be terrible but these at least are old-timey and terrible. Right now I have an alarming green neon tomato that is telling me it wants to be sliced in wedges and added to hot dogs.

My Civil War ancestors come from a place famous for tomatoes, Ripley, TN. They have been canning them since forever and have a tomato festival. We're fortunate enough in Memphis to get fresh Ripley tomatoes in the local groceries during the summer, instead of strange bioengineered modern objects. We need a tomato thread!

 

[diane]

I am a diabetic and realizing that diabetes is largely related to diet. You think about how different our diet is today compared to back then. They start out with bacon, salt pork and butter as being bad and then later discover the low carb quality of it. Today we don't have real food anymore. Even the tomatoes are fake. I love tomatoes but the store bought ones you could play racket ball with and not damage.

Diet is really a contribution to diabetes. It was unknown among Indians until the diet changed and now we're the people most like to get it. The food distributed now is much better than back in the day, too. Then it was flour, cornmeal, cooking oil, salted canned meats, syrupy canned fruit and nothing fresh. We could get deer and fish, grow a little garden. One thing about being poor - you can't afford the darn seed!

 

[KansasFreestater]

You can actually eat it later if you boil it long enough in several changes of water. Or so I'm told. I wouldn't, myself.

Old pokeweed is the best thing to have fake swordfights with as a kid, though!

Pokeweed with those beautiful red stemlets and purple berries is beautiful to look at -- but so, so deadly! It grows all over the place around here, as does wild chokecherry, which resembles it a little -- but oh, that difference is key! I'm so paranoid about poke that when my kids were little and exploring everywhere faster than I could keep up with them, I would go out with a knife and pull up or cut down every pokeweed I could see within a hundred yards of the house and get rid of it!

 

[KansasFreestater]

The recent thread on cornbread recipes brought this to my mind.

I've been researching the lives of people who were enslaved on my ancestor's plantation in Lauderdale county. I recently learned that several ex-slaves who remained on the plantation as sharecroppers died in the 1920's or 30's of pellagra, which led me to read more about pellagra. I bumped into a theory about the Civil War which I haven't seen discussed here before.

What is pellagra? It's a vitamin deficiency disease caused by lack of niacin, which causes peeling skin, mental confusion, weakness, diarrhea, and eventually death. Because of the peeling skin, it was sometimes thought of as a variety of leprosy.

Niacin is found in wheat, but not in corn (maize), unless the corn is treated with lime in a process called nixtamalization - which was commonly practiced by many Native Americans who relied on corn as a staple. When Europeans adopted the use of maize, they did not also adopt this process because the benefits were not understood, so their corn was niacin deficient. Enslaved Africans followed the same practices. Not until 1938 was the link between niacin deficiency and pellagra widely understood. But long before that time, the link between a staple diet of corn and pellagra had been noticed. It was believed that eating corn somehow caused the disease, possibly through insects, or a toxin, or a disease which lived on the corn. But the true culprit was a diet in which corn was the exclusive grain.

Now, here's the speculative part. During the Civil War, typical Union army rations involved hard tack, made from wheat. Confederate rations often substituted cornmeal.

This starts looking significant when you note that human experiments in the 1920's found that although it took five months of an exclusive corn-based diet for the classic lesions of pellagra to develop, confusion, weakness, headaches, and lethargy developed within two weeks. That means that despite Confederate medical records that state pellagra was unknown in the Confederate army, it's quite possible that many Confederate soldiers were suffering the early stages without anyone being aware.

Early stage pellagra has many systemic effects. It does a number on the immune system. And mental confusion doesn't sound like a good idea for a soldier.

Unfortunately I can't recall where I read this - perhaps someone else will know - but I remember reading the diary of a Union hospital matron who was shocked by the difference in how Confederate and Union soldiers responded to amputation. Many more Confederates died.

How much of an effect did early-stage pellagra have on the health and effectiveness of Confederate soldiers?

The other link between pellagra and the Civil War is that descriptions of deaths at Andersonville prison - where rations were notoriously poor - often resemble pellagra. A 1912 book by George Mccallum Niles, Pellagra: an American Problem, discusses interviews with several veterans who described symptoms identical to pellagra.

I found it interesting that pellagra was widely believed among doctors of the period NOT to have surfaced until after the war - certainly it wasn't recognized.

It's on little overlooked details like this that history often turns.