4. A diet of the composition used by pellagrins prior to their attack by the disease leads to malnutrition and certain pathological changes in animals, resembling those found in pellagra. A typical pellagrous dermatitis has not been observed in animals. Pellagrous symptoms have been produced in man by the continued consumption of a restricted vegetable diet.
5. The nature of the dietary effect has not been discovered, although certain observations point to a combined deficiency in some of the recognized dietary factors as the cause of the pellagrous syndrome.
In elaborating on conclusion 5 Voegtlin states that:
The conception that pellagra is due to a dietary deficiency is, therefore, not contradicted by the available evidence. This does not imply that the disease is necessarily due to a deficiency of diet in a specific substance such as the hypothetical pellagra vitamine of Funk (1913). It is much more likely that the pellagrous syndrome is caused by a combination of the deficiencies in some of the well recognized food factors.
V. OTHER AVITAMINOSES
The rôle of the vitamine in the nutrition and growth of organisms other than the man is becoming a matter of interest in various ways. The construction of culture media for various strains of bacteria and the conditions favorable or unfavorable to their growth, are features of study in which the new hypothesis has demanded attention. It has already been claimed that vitamines are essential to the growth of the meningococcus, the influenza bacillus, the typhoid bacillus, the gonococcus, the pneumococcus Type I, Streptococcus hemolyticus, the diptheria bacillus, the Bacillus pertussis and certain soil organisms. If these views are confirmed it becomes evident that the means for prevention of the development of these forms may lie in the control of the vitamine content of the materials on which these forms thrive and that in the study of these types it may be possible to speed up the incubation of strains and thus hasten diagnostic measures by introducing the necessary vitamines into the culture media. These observations merely suggest the possible widening of the scope of the vitamine study in the service of man and give added reason for our keeping pace with the strides made in this particular field.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABDERHALDEN, E., AND LAMPE, A. E.: Z. ges. exp. Med., (1913), i, 296.
ABDERHALDEN, E., AND SCHATJMANN: Beitrag zur Kenntnis von organischer
Nahrungsstoffen mit spezifischer Wirkung I. Pflüger's Archiv. f. d. ges.
Physiol., (1918), clxxii, 1.
ABDERHALDEN, E.: Weitere Beitrage zur Kenntnis von organischen
Nahrungsstoffen mit spezifischer Wirkung II. Pfülger's Archiv. f. d. ges.
Physiol., (1920), clxxviii, 133.