success in the storming of the Malakoff on the 8th of September. On the 12th he was promoted to be marshal. On his return to Paris he was named senator, created duke of Malakoff (July 22, 1856), and rewarded with a grant of 100,000 francs per annum. From March 1858 to May 1859 he was French ambassador in London, whence he was recalled to take command of the army of observation on the Rhine. In the same year he became grand chancellor of the Legion of Honour. In 1860 he was appointed governor-general of Algeria, and he died there on the 22nd of May 1864.
See Marbaud, Le Maréchal Pélissier (1863), Castille, Portraits historiques, 2nd series (1859)
PELL, JOHN (1610–1685), English mathematician, was born on the 1st of March 1610 at Southwick in Sussex, where his father was minister. He was educated at Steyning, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he became an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his M.A. degree (in 1630) corresponded with Henry 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. 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 on the 12th of December 1685 at the house of Mr Cothorne, reader of the church of St Giles-in-the Fields. Many of Pell’s manuscripts fell into the hands of Dr Busby, master of Westminster School, 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 the indeterminate equation 𝑎𝑥2+1＝𝑦2, which is known by his name. This problem was proposed by Pierre de Fermat first to Bernhard Frénicle de Bessy, and in 1657 to all mathematicians. Pell’s connexion with the problem simply consists of the publication of the solutions of John Wallis and Lord Brounker in his edition of Branker’s Translation of Rhonius’s Algebra (1668). His chief works are Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances (1634); Ecliptica prognostica (1634); Controversy with Longomontanus concerning the Quadrature of the Circle (1646?); An Idea of the Mathematics, 12mo (1650); A Table of Ten Thousand Square Numbers (fol.; 1672).
PELLA, the capital of ancient Macedonia under Philip II. (who transferred the seat of government hither from Edessa) and Alexander the Great, who was born here. It seems to have retained some importance up to the time of Hadrian. Scanty remains exist and some springs in the neighbourhood are still known as the baths of Pel. The site (identified by Leake) is occupied by the village of Neochori (Turk. Yeni-Keui) about 32 m. north-west of Salonika.
PELLAGRA (Ital pelle agra, smarting skin), the name given, from one of its early symptoms, to a peculiar disease, of comparatively modern origin. For some time it was supposed to be practically confined to the peasantry in parts of Italy (particularly Lombardy) and France, and in the Asturias (mal de la rosa), Rumania and Corfu. But it has recently been identified in various outlying parts of the British Empire (Barbadoes, India) and in both Lower and Upper Egypt, also among the Zulus and Basutos. In the United States sporadic cases had been observed up to 1906, but since then numerous cases have been reported. It is in Italy, however, that it has been most prevalent. The malady is essentially chronic in character. The indications 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. After a certain stage the disease passes into a profound disorganization of the nervous system; there is a tendency to melancholy, imbecility, and a curious mummified condition of body. After death a general tissue degeneration is observed.
The causation of this obscure disease has recently come up for new investigation in connexion with the new work done in relation to sleeping-sickness and other tropical diseases. So long as it was supposed to be peculiar to the Italian peasantry, it was associated simply with their staple diet, and was regarded as due to the eating of mouldy maize. It was by his views in this regard that Lombroso (q.v.) first made his scientific reputation. But the area of maize consumption is now known to be wider than that of pellagra, and pellagra is found where maize is at least not an ordinary diet. In 1905 Dr L. W. Sambon, at the meeting of the British Medical Association, suggested that pellagra was probably protozoal in origin, and subsequently he announced his belief that the protozoon was communicated by sand-flies, just as sleeping-sickness by the tsetse fly, and this opinion was supported by the favourable action of arsenic in the treatment of the disease. His hypothesis was endorsed by Sir Patrick Manson, and in January 1910 an influential committee was formed, to enable Dr Sambon to pursue his investigations in a pellagrous area.
PELLETAN, CHARLES CAMILLE (1846– ), French politician and journalist, was born in Paris on the 28th of June 1846, the son of Eugène Pelletan (1813–1884), a writer of some distinction and a noted opponent of the Second Empire. Camille Pelletan was educated in Paris, passed as licentiate in laws, and was qualified as an “archiviste paléographe.” At the age of twenty he became an active contributor to the press, and a bitter critic of the Imperial Government. After the war of 1870–71 he took a leading place among the most radical section of French politicians, as an opponent of the “opportunists” who continued the policy of Gambetta. In 1880 he became editor of Justice, and worked with success to bring about a revision of the sentences passed on the Communards. In 1881 he was chosen member for the tenth arrondissement of Paris, and in 1885 for the Bouches du Rhone, being re-elected in 1889, 1893 and 1898, and he was repeatedly chosen as “reporter” to the various bureaus. During the Nationalist and Dreyfus agitations he fought vigorously on behalf of the Republican government and when the coalition known as the “Bloc” was formed he took his place as a Radical leader. He was made minister of marine in the cabinet of M. Combes, June 1902 to January 1905, but his administration was severely criticized, notably by M. de Lanessan and other naval experts. During the great sailors’ strike at Marseilles in 1904 he showed pronounced sympathy with the socialistic aims and methods of the strikers, and a strong feeling was aroused that
