When corn arrived in Europe after 1492, it was hailed as a miracle crop, but eaten the wrong way it made skin crack and peel away in the sun, drove people into dementia and madness, and killed hundreds of thousands, and no one understood why for centuries.

A nutritional miracle that fed millions concealed a devastating deficiency, one that took centuries and countless deaths to understand. The post When corn arrived in Europe after 1492, it was hailed as a miracle crop, but eaten the wrong way it made skin crack and peel away in the sun, drove people into dementia and madness, and killed hundreds of thousands, and no one understood why for…