SCURVY
There is probably no disease of infancy which has come in for more study in the past few years than scurvy.
Cause.—The disease is believed to be directly due to a deficiency in the diet of the antiscorbutic vitamine, known as “Water soluble C.”
Treatment.—For many years it was known that lime juice exerted a curative effect upon scurvy. But recently the efficiency of this fruit juice has proved to fall far short of that effected by either orange, or tomato juice.
Feeding experiments have proved that animals, fed upon rations consisting of dry food without the addition of green, will develop scurvy. And that the milk of such animals will show a deficiency in the “C” vitamine which will lead to a development of the disease in infants fed upon such milk.
Milk is, in fact, by no means a perfect food, so far as its vitamine content is concerned. First, because the presence of the vitamine in milk is so dependent upon the diet of the mother or the animal, second, because the pasteurization temperatures used to insure cow’s milk of purity from a bacterial standpoint, destroys in it the greater part of its antiscorbutic power. Either of which makes it necessary to supplement the formula of the artificially fed infant, and, in case of the former, the mother’s milk of the breast-fed baby, with orange, or canned tomato juice.
The amount of either of the fruit juices which is necessary to insure the child of a freedom from scurvy, is small, ranging from one-half to one ounce of strained juice daily, this amount is increased gradually until the child is taking from one and one-half to two ounces each day. It has been found advisable to administer the fruit juice between the two morning feedings. As a rule, the fruit juices are given at the beginning of the seventh month, but they may be given at a much earlier date, the time being adjusted by the physician.