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Buddy Bolden and his likely mental illness misdiagnosis [1]

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Date: 2024-05-27  

Buddy Bolden played the cornet with a loud and brash tone, syncopation and blue notes, as described by the Historic New Orleans Collection. Considered the king of cornetists, Bolden was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to the Louisiana Insane Asylum in 1907.

At the time, the cause of his mental illness was attributed to alcohol abuse. However, a 21st century lens suggests he had a condition that was preventable and treatable with vitamins.

Pellagra, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, is a nutritional disorder caused by a niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency. Symptoms include inflamed skin, diarrhea, dementia and mouth sores.

The ailment had been called “sharecropper’s disease,” according to a 2020 64 Parishes article, because the people affected were Black, poor and had manual jobs.

“Pellagra has not received significant consideration as the possible cause of Bolden’s mental illness until now, perhaps in part because the disease is largely forgotten in the developed world,” James Karst wrote in “Buddy Bolden’s Blues.” “It was just emerging in the public’s consciousness as Bolden’s symptoms manifested.”

Born in 1877 as Charles Joseph Bolden, he combined ragtime, blues and spirituals to create the new sound known today as jazz. His dance band was quite popular in 1906 when he began to suffer from headaches, depression and delusions. Heavy drinking made matters worse.

Bolden was arrested in 1906 after striking his mother in the head with a pitcher. He thought she was trying to poison him. Two more arrests and an incorrect diagnosis later, he was institutionalized.

Nobody knew then what we know now.

“It didn’t help that medical treatment for poor Black men who ran afoul of the law and who were deemed to be insane was almost nonexistent,” Karst wrote.

Pellagra’s remedy was discovered in 1937. Bolden died in 1931.

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