PELL, John (1610-1685), mathematician, was born on 1st March 1610 at Southwick in Sussex, where his father was minister. He was educated at the free school of Steyning, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he made himself an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his Μ. A. degree (in 1630) he was engaged in learned correspondence with Briggs and other mathematicians. His great reputation and the influence of Sir William Boswell, the English resident, with the States-General procured his election in 1643 to the chair of mathematics in Amsterdam, whence he removed in 1646, on the invitation of the prince of Orange, to Breda, where he remained till 1652....
From 1654 to 1658 Pell acted as Cromwell’s political agent to the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. On his return to England he took orders and was appointed by Charles II. to the rectory of Fobbing in Essex, and in 1673 he was presented by Bishop Sheldon to the rectory of Laindon in the same county. His devotion to mathematical science seems to have interfered alike with his advancement in the church and with the proper management of his private affairs. Cheated, it is said, by his tenants and relations, he was reduced to the utmost poverty. For a time he was confined as a debtor in the King’s Bench prison. He lived, on the invitation of Dr Whistler, for a short time in 1682 at the College of Physicians, but died 12th December 1685 at the house of Mr Cothorne, reader of the church of St Giles in the Fields. He was buried at the expense of the rector of this church and of Dr Busby, the master of Westminster School. Many of Pell’s manuscripts fell into the hands of Dr Busby, and afterwards came into the possession of the Royal Society; they are still preserved in something like forty folio volumes, which contain, not only Pell’s own memoirs, but much of his correspondence with the mathematicians of his time.
The Diophantine analysis was a favourite subject with Pell; he lectured on it at Amsterdam; and he is now best remembered for his solution of the indeterminate equation, ax t -y 2 =l, which is now known by his name, and which had been proposed by Fermat as a challenge to the English mathematicians. His chief works are Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances, 1634; Ecliptica Prognostica, 1634; Controversy with Loηgomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle, 1646 (?); An Idea of the Mathematics, 12mo, 1650; Branker's Translation of Rhonius's Algebra, much altered and augmented, 4to, 1668; A Table of Ten Thousand Square Numbers, fol., 1672.
PELLA. See Macedonia, vol. xv. p. 137.
PELLAGRA (Itai, ρelle agra, smarting skin) is the name given, from one of its early symptoms, to a peculiar disease, of comparatively modern origin, occurring among the peasantry, in Lombardy and other provinces of northern Italy, and in the Asturias (mal de la rosa), Gascony, Roumania, and Corfu. It is a progressive disease of nutrition tending towards profound paralytic and mental disorders, and is associated to a very significant extent, if not even invariably, with a staple diet of damaged maize along with other peculiarly wretched and hopeless conditions of living. Although Lombardy is the garden of Italy, its peasantry are over-worked, under-paid, and underfed; instead of a diet suited to their severe labour, their sustenance consists largely of the more worthless kinds of Indian corn of their own growing, the produce of poorly-cultivated ground, sown late, harvested before maturity, and stored carelessly in its wet state; even if they grow a certain proportion of good maize-corn the millers, to whom they are often in debt, are more likely to grind the worst samples for the peasants’ own use. The flour is either made into a kind of porridge—the “polenta” of Italy, the “cruchade” of Gascony, or the “mamaliga” of Roumania— or it is made into loaves, without yeast, baked hastily on the surface only or on one side, and raw and wet within, large enough to last a week, and apt to turn sour and mouldy before the week is out., which includes a little rye-bread, sour most of the time, a few sardines, and rancid lard. Meat is almost excluded from their food; sometimes on fête-days one may see a quarter of mutton or veal at the repast. Their usual drink is water, and mostly bad water; wine is not drunk except in well-to-do families. Their dwellings are ...deplorable; they are low-roofed and damp, built of wattle, and constantly enveloped in reek. It often happens that man and beast live together. Pellagra rages as an endemic among these populations.” ]
That pellagra is not a morbus miseriae pure and simple, wanting some more specific cause, will be at once apparent when we consider that the misery of living is as old as the human race, whereas pellagra is a disease of the last hundred years or so, and that in Ireland, Russia, Upper Silesia, Galicia, or other headquarters of the morbi miseriae, pellagra is unknown. The special factor is undoubtedly maize as an article of diet or as the staple diet; but it is, on the other hand, perfectly clear that there is nothing in a maize diet itself to induce pellagra. Compared with the enormous extent of the maize-zone both in the western and eastern hemispheres, the pellagra-area is a mere spot on the map; excluding Corfu, it lies between the parallels of 46° and 42° N.; and the exception of Corfu is a significant one. It is only since 1856 that pellagra ha;.: become endemic in that island. Maize has always thriven well there; but wine-growing has displaced it to a great extent, and the maize, which is still largely in request with the peasantry, is now mostly imported; it is in fact chiefly Roumanian maize of an inferior kind, and all the more deteriorated owing to its long water-transit by way of the Danube and Black Sea. Again, in the Danubian provinces themselves the peasantry of Transylvania, who are by no means well off, are free from pellagra, notwithstanding their addiction to polenta, having long ago learned the art of husbandry from the Saxon part of the population; they allow the maize to ripen to the utmost, and then let it dry on the ground and afterwards in barns, whereas the Wallack peasantry of Roumania, who are subject to pellagra, gather the corn before it is ripe, and shoot it into pits where it becomes musty. In other countries where the conditions of climate and soil are somewhat trying for maize, as in Burgundy, Franche Comté, and the Bresse in France, and in Mexico, the greatest care is taken to dry the Indian corn before it is stored; and it may be said that wherever these precautions are taken pellagra does not follow. It has happened on several occasions, after a particularly bad maize-harvest, that pellagra has risen almost to an epidemic. Again, its prevalence within its actual endemic area varies much from province to province or from commune to commune, being always last where the maize-diet is supplemented by wheaten flour, rice, beans, chestnuts, potatoes, or fish.
Characters of the Disease.— The indications of pellagra usually begin in the spring of the year, declining towards autumn, and recurring with increasing intensity and permanence in the spring seasons following. A peasant who is acquiring the malady feels unfit for work, suffers from headaches, giddiness, singing in the ears, a burning of the skin, especially in the hands and feet, and diarrhoea. At the same time a red rash appears on the skin, of the nature of erysipelas, the red or livid spots being tense and painful, especially where they are directly exposed to the sun. About July or August of the first season these symptoms disappear, the spots on the skin remaining rough and dry. The spring attack of the year following will probably be more severe and more likely to leave traces behind it; with each successive year the patient becomes more like a mummy, his skin shrivelled and sallow, or even black at certain spots, as in Addison’s disease, his angles protruding, his muscles wasted, his movements slow and languid, and his sensibility diminished. Meanwhile there are more special symptoms relating to the nervous system, including drooping of the eyelid, dilatation of the pupil, and other disorders of vision, together with symptoms relating to the digestive system, such as a red and dry tongue, a burning feeling in the mouth, pain on swallowing, and diarrhoea. Peasants with this progressive malady upon them come to the towns spring after spring seeking relief at the various hospitals, and under a good regimen and a permanently improved diet the malady is often checked. But after a certain stage the disease is confirmed in a profound disorganization of the nervous system; spasms of the limbs begin to occur, and contractures of the joints from partial paralysis of the extensor muscles and preponderant action of the flexors; melancholy, imbecility, and a strong suicidal tendency are common accompaniments. A large number of pellagrous peasants end their days in lunatic asylums in a state of drivelling wretchedness or raving madness; many more drag out a miserable existence in the communes where their working years had been spent, sometimes receiving the communal relief to which the law entitles them; while the cases that are reckoned curable are in Italy received into the various endowed hospitals, of which there are a large number. Cases that are rapidly fatal end in delirium or a state of typhoid stupor; the more protracted cases are cut off at last by rapid wasting, colliquative and ill-smelling sweats, profuse diarrhoea, and dropsy. After death a variety of textural changes are found, which may be referred in general to trophic disorders, or disorders of tissue-nutrition; in a considerable number the kidneys are in the contracted state corresponding to the clinical condition of Bright’s disease without albuminuria; another condition often remarked is thinning of the muscular coats of the intestine; deposits of pigment in the internal organs are also characteristic, just as the discoloration of the skin is during life.
Treatment.— There is hardly any doubt as to the remedy for pellagra, just as there is hardly any doubt as to its cause. The question is mainly one of the social condition of the peasantry, of their food and wages; it is partly, also, a question of growing Indian corn on a soil or in a climate where it will not mature unless with high farming. There is nothing in the resources of medicine proper to cure this disease; as the cause is, so must the remedy be.
Affinities of Pellagra.— The disease has the general characters of a tropho-neurosis. The early involvement of certain areas of the skin, especially in exposed places such as the hands and feet, suggests leprosy; as in that disease, there is first hyperaesthesia and then loss of sensibility, sometimes a thickening of the surface and discolorations; and, although in pellagra the onset each successive spring and the subsidence towards autumn are distinctive, yet in leprosy also the cutaneous disorder is apt to come and go at first, reappearing at the same spots and gradually becoming fixed. The grand difference in leprosy, at least in the nodular variety of it, is that a new growth of a granulomatous kind arises at these spots in the skin and around the nerves. The occasional deep discoloration of the pellagrous skin in certain spots has suggested a resemblance to Addison’s disease of the suprarenals, and has even made the diagnosis difficult. But after the cutaneous disorders the course of pellagra is something sui generis ; the melancholy, imbecility, or mania, as well as the mummified state of the body, are peculiar to it. With ergotism the points of resemblance are more perhaps in the causation than in the nosological characters; both diseases are specifically due to damaged grain, ergotism being caused by the presence of an actual bulky parasitic mould on rye, whereas pellagra is more probably caused by fermentation and decomposition within the proper substance of the maize-corn. As regards heredity, it is much less marked in pellagra than in leprosy, but there are good grounds for believing that the disease is in fact inherited sometimes by the offspring; infants at the breast may show the symptoms of it, but that fact is not in itself conclusive for heredity, for the reason that infants at the breast are partly fed on the household polenta. As regards contagiousness, there is no more proof of it in pellagra than there is in leprosy.
- Geographical Distribution and History.— Pellagra is peculiarly a disease of the peasantry, being hardly ever seen in residents of the towns. In Italy the number of peasants affected by it was estimated in 1879 at 100,000, the distribution being as follows :—Lombardy, 40,838; Venetia, 29,386; Piedmont, 1692; Liguria, 148; Aemilia, 18,728; Tuscany, 4382; the Marches and Umbria, 2155; Rome, 76. In Lombardy the worst centres are in the provinces of Brescia, Pavia, Piacenza, and Ferrara. In Italy the disease has increased very considerably within the last thirty years; thus, in the province of Vicenza the number of persons known to be pellagrous in 1853-55 was 1380, in 1860 it was 2974, and in 1879 it had risen to 3400. There, are no accurate returns from the Asturias and other affected provinces of Spain, but the malady there is said to have declined very materially of late. In Gascony, where it did not begin until about fifty years ago, it is somewhat common, more in the Landes than in the Gironde; in one district of the latter Petit estimates that there are 200 cases in a population of 6000. In Roumania the total number is given at 4500, Moldavia having a larger share than Wallachia. In Corfu it exists in 27 out of the 117 communes, the proportion of cases for the whole island being 3'2 per 1000 inhabitants.
Maize was grown in Europe for many years before pellagra showed itself (see Maize) ; but the outbreak of the disease corresponds on the whole closely in time (particularly in Gascony and Roumania) with the introduction of an inferior kind of maize as the staple food of the peasantry. The first accounts of pellagra come from Spain. Casal in 1762 described the disease in the Asturias under the name of mal de la rosa ; it is said to have been noticed first in 1735 around Oviedo, being then confined within very narrow limits. The Asturias are still its headquarters in Spain, but it is prevalent also in Burgos, Navarra, Zaragoza, Lower Aragon, Guadalajara, and Cuenca, and. it is met with in other provinces as well. In Italy it was first reported from the vicinity of Lago Maggiore, and a few years later (in 1750) it broke out simultaneously in the districts of Milan, Brescia, Bergamo, and Lodi, extending afterwards to Como, Cremona, Mantua, and Pavia, and to the whole of Lombardy before the end of the century. It became endemic also in Venetia on the one side and in Piedmont on the other, almost contemporaneously with this. Within the present century it has extended its area southwards into Aemilia and into Tuscany, while it has become more prevalent in its earlier seats at the same time. There is very little of it in central Italy, while southern Italy with Sicily, is absolutely exempt, notwithstanding the common use of Indian corn in the form of bread and macaroni. The first authentic information of its existence in Gascony came from near Arcachon in 1818, after which it spread along the coast of the Gironde and the Landes. It has extended subsequently along the left bank of the Garonne and towards the Pyrenees; but around Dax it is said to have decreased considerably of late. In Roumania, where the medical profession is unanimous in tracing it to the use of damaged maize, it dates from about 1833-46. It is only since 1856 that it has become endemic in Corfu, under the circumstances already mentioned.
Literature.—La Pellagra in Italia, Rome, 1880 (official report, with appendices relating to France, Spain, and Roumania, and a copious bibliography extending to fifteen pages). An article on “The Pellagra in Italy,” in the Edin. Rev. for April 1881, is based on this report. The authority for Corfu isTypaldos. The best inquiries on the toxic properties of damaged maize are those of Lombroso. See also Hirsch, Historisch-geographische Pathologie, vol. ii., 2d ed., Stuttgart, 1883 (Engl, trans.).
PELLICANUS, Conrad (1478-1556), one of the most interesting minor figures in German theology and scholarship in the great age of the Reformation, was born at Ruffach in Alsace in the winter of 1478. His paternal name was Kürsner, his father’s father having been a currier of Wyl in the Black Forest. The Latin name of Pellicanus was chosen for him by his mother’s brother Jodocus Gallus, an ecclesiastic connected with the university of Heidelberg, who gave his nephew sixteen months at the university at the cost of some fourteen florins in 1491-92. Pellican’s parents were worthy people, but very poor; the boy was eager for learning, but had no books; at school at Ruffach, where he had learned well, “with much fear and many a scourging,” it was only the richer boys who had a copy of the Ulm Donatus of 1485. So when his uncle tired of him and he came back to Ruffach, with some knowledge of the great Latin classics as well as of the usual bachelor’s course, he was glad to teach gratis in the Minorite convent school that he might borrow books from the library, and in his sixteenth year he resolved to become a friar. This step helped his studies, for he was sent to Tübingen in 1496 and became a favourite pupil of the guardian of the Minorite convent there, Paulus Scriptoris, a man of considerable general learning and of much boldness and honesty, who anticipated Luther in his open preaching on such topics as vows, indulgences, and the sacraments. There seems to have been at that time in south-west Germany a considerable amount of sturdy independent thought among the Franciscans, and more genuine conformity to the original ideas of the order than is often supposed; Pellicanus himself became a Protestant very gradually, and without any such revulsion of feeling as ...marked Luther’s conversion; at the moment when he went to Zurich and threw off the cowl he was pleased to think that the good St Francis would not abhor him for his change of dress, and for learning for the first time at the age of forty-eight the difference between crowns, florins, and batzen. At Tübingen the future “apostate in three languages” was able to begin the study of Hebrew. He had no teacher and no grammar; but Paulus Scriptoris carried him a huge codex of the prophets on his own shoulders all the way from Mainz. He learned the letters from the transcription of a few verses in the Star of the Messiah of Petrus Niger, and, with a subsequent hint or two from Reuchlin, who also lent him the grammar of Moses Kimhí, made his way through the Bible for himself with the help of Jerome’s Latin. He got on so well that he was not only a useful helper to Reuchlin but anticipated the manuals of the great Hebraist by composing in 1501 the first Hebrew grammar in a European tongue. It was printed in 1503, and afterwards included in Reysch’s Margarita Philosophica. Hebrew remained a favourite study to the last. Pellican’s autobiography is full of interesting details as to the gradual multiplication of accessible books on the subject, which he hunted up in every journey; and ultimately he not only studied but translated a vast mass of rabbinical and Talmudic texts. With a cooler judgment than Reuchlin, however, he was not deceived as to the true value of the later Hebrew wisdom, and his interest in Jewish literature was mainly philological. In linguistic knowledge he reached a high standard for that time,—certainly higher than that of his better-known pupil, S. Münster. The chief fruit of these studies is the vast Biblical commentary published at Zurich in his later years (1532-39, 7 vols.), which shows a remarkably sound judgment on questions of the text, and a sense for historical as opposed to typological exegesis, such as soon disappeared from the Protestant Church and was hardly equalled by any in his own day. Pellicanus became priest in 1501 and continued to serve his order at Ruffach, Pforzheim, and Basel till 1526. At Basel he did much laborious work for Froben’s editions, and acquired a thorough knowledge of the early fathers, through which his dissatisfaction with current dogma gradually ripened into conviction that the church taught many doctrines of which the early doctors of Christendom knew nothing. He spoke his views frankly, but he disliked polemic, and was happy in his convent or in long journeys in the service of his order, which carried him over all south Germany and through Italy as far as Rome; he found also more toleration than might have been expected, even after he became active in circulating Luther’s books. Thus, supported by the civic authorities, he remained guardian of the convent of his order at Basel from 1519 till 1524, and, even when he had to give up this post, remained in the monastery for two years, professing theology in the university and always toiling with indefatigable zeal. At length, when the position was becoming quite untenable, he received through Zwingli a call to Zurich as professor of Hebrew, and, formally throwing off his monk’s habit, entered on a new life. Here he remained till his death in 1556, falling into his new surroundings with the ease of a simple affectionate nature, happy in the friendship of Zwingli and Bullinger, hospitably entertaining the many learned strangers who visited Zurich or the poor students who crowded to its school, avoiding religious controversy, and always deep in his books. The step in life which cost him most thought was his marriage, but this' also proved so happy an experiment that he lived to be married a second time. In his later years he was afflicted with the stone, the torture of so many of the older scholars, but he continued active till the last.
Pellican’s scholarship, though not brilliant, was really extensive; his sound sense and his singularly pure and devoted character gave him a great influence, as is apparent even in the too modest autobiography which he wrote for his son. He was curiously free from the pedantry of the time for a man who had lived so much among books; his views about the use of the German vernacular as a vehicle of culture (C 1 hrαn., 135, 36) are a striking proof of this. As a theologian his natural affinities were with Zwingli, with whom in his smaller sphere he shared the advantage of having grown up to the views of the Reformation, without any sudden and violent mental struggle, by the natural progress of his studies and religious life. Thus he never lost his sympathy with humanism and with its great German representative, Erasmus. The Reformed Church might have had a happier course if it had longer kept to the lines of the first Zurich doctors. Pellican’s Latin autobiography (Chronicon C. Ρ. R,.) is one of the most interesting documents of the period. It was first published by Riggenbach in 1877, and in this volume the other sources for his life are registered.
PELLICO, Silvio (1788-1854), Italian dramatist, was born at Saluzzo in Piedmont on 24th June 1788, the earlier portion of his life being passed at Pinerolo and Turin under the tuition of a priest named Manavella. A taste for the drama, fostered by private theatrical recitals, showed itself at the age of ten in the composition of a tragedy under the inspiration of Caesarotti’s translation of the Ossianic poems. On the marriage of his twin sister Rosina with a maternal cousin at Lyons he went to reside in that city, devoting himself during four years to the study of French literature. His patriotism having been re-awakened by the reading of Foscolo’s Dei Sepolcm, he returned in 1810 to Milan, where he became professor of French in the Collegio degli Orfani Militari. The appearance of Carlotta Marchionni on the Milan stage induced him to compose for her the tragedy Francesca da Rimini, which, despite the adverse criticism of Foscolo, was brought out with success on the return of the actress to the city a few years later. Its publication was followed by that of the tragedy Eufemio da Messina, but the representation of the latter was forbidden. Pellico had in the meantime continued his work as tutor, first to the unfortunate son of Count Briche, and then to the two sons of Count Porro Lambertenghi. In this capacity he was brought into contact with many of the foremost men of the day and threw himself heartily into an attempt to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. Of the powerful literary executive which gathered about Counts Porro and Confalonieri, Pellico was the able secretary,—the management of the Conciliatore, which appeared in 1818 as the organ of the association, resting largely upon him. But the paper, under the relentless ...censorship of the Austrian officials, ran for a single year only, and the society itself was broken up by the more vigorous action of the Government consequent upon the formation of the constitution of Naples. In October 1820 Pellico was arrested on the charge of carbonarism and conveyed to the Santa Margherita prison. Occupied at first in preparing his defence and in religious meditation, he found means, after his removal to the Piombi at Venice in February 1821, to resume literary work, composing there several Cantiche and the tragedies Ester cfEngaddi and Iginia TAsti. The sentence of death pronounced on him in February 1822 was finally commuted to fifteen years carcere duro, and in the following April he was placed in the Spielberg at Brünn. His chief work during this part of his imprisonment was the tragedy Leoniero da Dertona, for the preservation of which he was compelled to rely on his memory. After his release in 1830 he commenced the publication of his prison compositions, of which the Ester was played at Turin in 1831, but immediately suppressed. In 1832 appeared his Gismonda da Mendñzio, Erodiade, and the Leoniero, under the title of Tre nuovi Tragédie, and in the same year the work which gave him his European fame, Le Mie Prigioni. The last gained him the friendship of the Marchesa di Barolo, the reformer of the Turin prisons, and in 1834 he accepted from her a yearly pension of 1200 francs. His tragedy Tommaso Moro had been published in 1833, his most important subsequent publication being the Opere Inedite in 1837. On the decease of his parents in 1838 he was received into the Casa Barolo, where he remained till his death, assisting the marchesa in her charities, and writing chiefly upon religious themes. Of these works the best known is the Dei Doveri degli Uomini, a series of trite maxims which do honour to his piety rather than to his critical judgment. A fragmentary biography of the marchesa by Pellico was published in Italian and English after her death. He died 31st January 1854, and was buried in the Campo Santo at Turin. His writings, whether in prose or verse, are chaste and graceful, but defective in virility and breadth of thought, and his tragedies display neither the insight into character nor the constructive power of a great dramatist. It is in the simple narrative and naive egotism of Le Mie Prτgioni that he has established his strongest claim to remembrance, winning fame by his misfortunes rather than by his genius.
Cf. Piero Maroncelli, Addizioni alle Mie Prigioni, Paris, 1834; the biographies by Latour; Gabriele Rosselli; Didier, Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1842; De Loménie, Galerie des Contemp. Illustr., iv., 1842; Chiala, Turin, 1852; Nollet-Fabert, 1854; Giorgio Briano, 1854; Bourdon, 1868; and the life of the Marchesa di Barolo.
