344 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



(b) producing young but failing to secrete a milk supply for 

 their nutrition, (c) producing a milk supply inadequate in 

 quality such that the young do not thrive, (d) developing 

 cannibalistic tendencies leading the mother to destroy the 

 young. 



Recent studies of Koessler lend strong support to the 

 view that chronic underfeeding with respect to vitamin a 

 can produce pernicious anemia. The trend of events in the 

 history of such patients includes digestive disturbances 

 followed by decreased acid secretion in the stomach, resulting 

 eventually in achlorhydria. Under such conditions bacteria 

 frequently develop in the stomach, while peptic digestion 

 fails. The periodic inundation of the duodenum with badly 

 infected food, or half-digested bacterially contaminated 

 food, results in seeding the entire small intestine with 

 putrefactive organisms. The mucosa of both the stomach 

 and intestine is believed to be impaired in respect to secre- 

 tion and absorption, so that the body tends to be injured by 

 failure of its food supply because of faulty digestion, and 

 also through intoxication caused by absorbing the products 

 of putrefaction which are produced under such circumstances 

 in extraordinary amounts. These substances are in the main 

 destroyed in the process of absorption in normal individuals 

 but the impaired intestinal mucosa appears to promote 

 their passage directly into the blood stream where they 

 tend to destroy the corpuscles and also to injure the blood- 

 forming tissues. One of the most notable discoveries of 

 recent years is the extraordinarily beneficial effect of feeding 

 liver to patients suffering from pernicious anemia. 



Since in recent years the tendency in the United States 

 has been in the direction of subsisting upon a diet derived 

 from refined cereals, such as white flour, degerminated 

 corn meal, polished rice and other similar products, meats 

 of a muscle type, potatoes, and sugar, the author has for a 

 decade offered what appears to be the simplest advice as to 

 how the diet may be greatly improved in quality without 

 interfering with our established dietary practices. Milk 

 and the leafy type of vegetables are the only calcium-rich 

 foods, and both of these are so constituted as to have proteins 

 peculiarly effective in supplementing the rather inferior 



