54 BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 



beriberi disappeared from among them, as is described 

 by Colonel Hehir in the Mesopotamia report. A better 

 instance than the foregoing could scarcely be wished 

 for to show that beriberi develops on a diet consisting 

 too largely of overmilled cereals, and clears up when 

 the whole grain is served out. 



Scurvy in War-time. Though the Indian soldier's 

 diet is so satisfactory from the beriberi standpoint, it 

 is not so from that of scurvy. When on his ordinary 

 diet, the staple of which is atta, dhal, rice and fresh 

 vegetables, he is not far from the scurvy margin, and 

 when, as was the case in Mesopotamia, fresh fruit 

 and vegetables disappear from the dietary, he is in a 

 very bad way indeed, because he has not the fresh 

 meat of the British soldier. Very many Indians will 

 not eat meat, and those who do generally boil it to 

 rags, so that much of the anti-scorbutic vitamine is 

 destroyed by the prolonged heating. Scurvy among 

 Indian soldiers in Kut was severe, except among the 

 Gurkhas who ate meat; it improved considerably 

 when at last, in the later stages of the siege, many 

 of the men were prevailed on to eat horse and mule 

 meat. 



It may give cause to wonder that lime-juice, which 

 has ranked even in the public mind as a panacea 

 against scurvy, has scarcely yet been mentioned in 

 this connection. Those who saw it in use in Mesopo- 

 tamia got the impression that it was powerless, and 

 our own experiments seem to show that fresh lime- 

 juice is much weaker than fresh orange- or lemon- 

 juice, and that the very much older commercial 

 lime-juice is useless. The reputation that it has 

 enjoyed it seems to have acquired undeservedly from 

 lemon -juice. In the old naval records very great 

 value against scurvy is ascribed to lime- or lemon- 

 juice. These records date back to the end of the 



