The investigation into the nature of pellagra was of enormous importance to the Italians, who continued to suffer severely from this evil down to the present day. We might be justified here in giving a detailed account of these studies, because it was in them that Lombroso, above all, showed himself to be a careful experimenter—an experimental pathologist of the first rank. But from the point of view of this book, the significance of these investigations and struggles lies, not so much in the enrichment and development of his knowledge—not so much, that is to say, in the intellectual sphere—as in the light they throw upon the man’s intimate life, and upon his character. In my concluding chapter I shall give some account of the means employed by those whose interests were affected by Lombroso’s discoveries (in co-operation with those to whom, as a self-taught man, and one outside the official and professorial ring, he was an object of dislike) to annihilate this obnoxious investigator. To the extent of depriving him of his means of livelihood in Pavia, they were to a large extent successful. But after a struggle lasting thirty years, Lombroso’s intoxication theory of pellagra has been finally victorious, and has been officially recognized by the Italian Government. Moreover, this theory has been confirmed by the most recent investigations of Tirelli, Pellizzi, Gosio, and Ferrati, although other toxins of damaged maize are now considered to be of greater importance than the one to which Lombroso gave the name of “pellagrozeïn.” Lombroso’s proposals in the province of agrarian reform were in part of a purely technical nature, and in part based upon a profound (and in his day, at least, well-grounded) distrust of the rival factions in the Italian parliament. At one time he went so far as to believe that nothing could be done to save the peasants and small farmers from pellagra, as long as they remained in their North Italian homes; and he recommended a wholesale emigration to North America.[47]