Appleton (42) has contributed valuable data relating to the character of the diet of the people of Labrador along the Straits of Belle Isle, and also observations on the relation of the faulty food supply to the incidence of deficiency diseases. Under their dietary practises beri-beri, scurvy, edema and ophthalmia of dietary origin are of fairly common occurrence, and Dr. Appleton reports a single case of pellagra. This last observation is of extraordinary importance, for it is very unlikely that the patient should have been exposed to the disease, and its occurrence in this isolated region in sporadic cases, would seem to support the view that it is a deficiency of some kind in the diet which produces it.

The striking thing about Appleton's report, is that sometimes one and sometimes another of the deficiency diseases develops among people whose diet is so similar in different households. The entire population is evidently in a state of extreme nutritional instability, and small deviations of the constitution of the diet determine which disease will appear. The following table gives the approximate consumption of their principal articles of diet.

Meat, salt fish, potatoes and dried peas are eaten only once or twice a week and the supply may become exhausted in April. Game is scarce and is little eaten. Fresh trout, cod and salmon are caught only during the summer. Small quantities of rice, onions or dried beans are occasionally secured, but only rarely. Gardening is little practised, but in favorable seasons enough cabbage may be grown to last until November. Poultry are not kept as a rule and egg powder is imported only in sufficient amounts for making cakes for fetes. The only fresh fruit ever eaten are partridge berries and another little yellow berry called locally "baked apple." Tea is consumed in enormous amounts, ten to eighteen cups a day being not unusual.