Santiago Giménez-Roldán, Valerie S Palmer, Peter S Spencer
After the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), an estimated 1,000 patients presented with lathyrism due to their excessive and prolonged consumption of grasspea ( Lathyrus sativus L.) against the backdrop of poverty, drought, and famine. Based on 68 scientific communications between 1941 and 1962 by qualified medical professionals, the disease emerged in different geographical locations involving selective populations: (1) farmers from extensive areas of central Spain, traditionally producers and consumers of grasspea; (2) immigrants in the industrial belt of Catalonia and in the Basque Country, areas with little or no production of grasspea, which was imported from producing areas; (3) workers in Galicia, an area where the legume is neither produced nor consumed, who were seasonally displaced to high-production areas of grasspea in Castille; and (4) inmates of overcrowded postwar Spanish prisons...
June 5, 2023: Journal of the History of the Neurosciences