Hess1 reports that in an asylum where infants were fed with pasteurized milk during a period of four months scurvy developed, accompanied by a stunting in the normal growth of the infants. This was at once corrected by the administration of orange-juice.

Lime-juice was early found to be a preventive of scurvy, and its introduction into the British Navy in 1795 led to the disappearance of the disease among the sailors.

Hoist2 describes how Cartier on his second voyage to Newfoundland, in 1535, administered with great success a fresh decoction of pine needles to a crew of 103 men of whom only 3 were free from scurvy. When the Eskimos suffer from this disease Hoist states that they turn to the liver of seals or, better, to fresh "matok," which is the rete Malpighii of the skin of whales.

During the siege of Paris scurvy broke out on a large scale on account of the prolonged one-sided diet of farinaceous nutriment. Under ordinary conditions in civilized communities scurvy is of rare occurrence, although it has been known to develop in poorhouses which have been placed under ignorant or dishonest control.

1Hess, A. F.: "Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine," 1915, xiii, 50.

2 Hoist: "XVth International Congress of Hygiene," Washington, 1912, ii, 588.

Another disease which, in all probability, is a deficiency disease, is pellagra. Funk1 states that in the United States between 1907 and 1912 20,000 persons died of pellagra, the mortality being 40 per cent, among those suffering from the disease. Pellagra occurs in the "corn belt" of the United States, and especially among the poorer classes of the South. The disease has developed since the introduction in 1880 of highly perfected machinery which furnishes corn and wheat completely freed of their outer coverings. In Italy, where the process of milling corn is primitive, the mortality among the pellagrins is only 4 per cent. Nightingale2 reports that in a prison in Rhodesia, where hand-milled maize was given, this food proved to be adequate, but when maize without its skin was substituted 1210 cases of pellagra occurred. There is no pellagra in zones where the potato is cultivated. Nightingale concluded that the disease was in no way infectious or contagious. Green vegetables, meat, butter, and potatoes are found to be the best antidotes.

Goldberger3 reports that at an isolated convict camp in Mississippi 11 volunteers were placed on a one-sided diet of wheat, corn, and rice, as the result of which 6 individuals developed pellagra after the diet had been administered for about five months.

Vedder4 believes that pellagra, like beriberi and scurvy, is a deficiency disease, though the possibility of its being of infectious nature remains an open question. The deficiency is attributed to a too exclusive use of wheat flour in association with cornmeal, salt meats, canned goods, all of which are deficient in vitamins. He writes: "If pellagra is a deficiency disease it has an extremely long depletion period. If Goldberger and his associates produced pellagra in their human feeding experiments, the depletion periods on the diets used may be placed at at least five months".

1 Funk: "Mtlnchener medizinische Wochenschrift," 1914, lxi, 698.

2 Nightingale: "British Medical Journal," 1914, No. 1, 300.

3 Goldberger: "Journal of the American Medical Association," 1916, lxvi, 471.

4 Vedder, E. B.: "Archives of Internal Medicine," 1916, xviii, 137; "Journal of the Amer. Med. Assoc.," 1916, lxvii, 1494.

The United States Public Health Service has maintained an important station at Spartanburg, S. C, in the heart of the pellagra district, and has issued several valuable reports which cannot here be detailed.1

One may now pass to the more detailed consideration of the vitamins, the acknowledged discoverer of which is Gow-land Hopkins. An important advance was scored when Funk2 separated a material from yeast a few milligrams of which cured polyneuritis in pigeons. From 100 kilograms of dry yeast he3 extracted 2.5 grams of a material which, when administered in doses of 2 milligrams to pigeons paralyzed with beriberi induced by a diet of polished rice, cured them in three hours.

Working in Japan, Suzuki, Shimamura, and Odake4 extracted rice-bran first with ether and then with alcohol. The purified substance obtained from the alcohol extract was said to cure beriberi in pigeons when 10 milligrams of the material were administered.

The effect of the vitamins upon growth has been especially studied by Osborne and Mendel and by McCollum and Davis. Whether there are specific vitamins for growth has not been clearly established.

Experiments concerning growth may be conducted with especial ease upon pigs and rats. McCollum5 concludes that the growth impulse of the pig is greater than that of the rat on account of the data contained in the following table:

1 Hunter, Givens, and Lewis: "Preliminary Observations of Metabolism in Pellagra," Hygienic Laboratory, Bulletin 102, 1916; Koch and Voegtlin, "Chemical Changes in the Central Nervous System as a Result of Restricted Vegetable Diet," Hygienic Laboratory, Bulletin 103, 1916.

2 Funk: "Journal of Physiology," 1911-12, xliii, 395. 3Funk: Ibid., 1913, xlvi, 173; ibid., 1914, xlviii, 228.

4 Suzuki, Shimamura, and Odake: "Biochemische Zeitschrift," 1912, xliii, 89.

5 McCollum: "Journal of Biological Chemistry," 1914, xix, 323.

It is evident that the pig, both as regards body weight and nitrogen content, increases relatively somewhat more rapidly than does the rat. However, in both species the growth impulse is very great and very constant, so that deviations in the curve of normal growth, when caused by insufficiency of diet, may be readily established. The rat reaches full growth after two hundred and eighty days and lives about three years.