NUTRITION, LIVER DISEASE AND SOME 

 ASPECTS OF AGEING IN AFRICANS* 



T. GlLLMAN 



Faculty of Medicine, University of Natal, Durban 



Although what I have to say has not been previously pre- 

 pared as a formal paper, I should nevertheless like to indicate 

 the kind of problems which we meet in the Union of South 

 Africa, and which may have implications for the study of 

 ageing — especially in backward countries. I would also like 

 to outline some of the methods and hypotheses which we are 

 applying in our attempts to understand this material. Before 

 leaving South Africa to come abroad, I prepared a series 01 

 coloured lantern slides to illustrate our material, and I am 

 grateful to our chairman for this opportunity of presenting 

 them to you. 



Part of the work — and especially that being done in col- 

 laboration with Drs. M. Hathorn and N. Lamont — is on the 

 role of malnutrition in the production of the liver and cardiac 

 diseases so commonly encountered in the African in Durban. 

 This work is being integrated with our experimental studies 

 on various aspects of the repair of injury in relation to 

 carcinogenesis and ageing. We think that the repair of the 

 continuously inflicted injuries, consequent on chronic malnu- 

 trition, may be important in causing the peculiar incidence of 

 various forms of hepatic and vascular disease, primary liver 

 cancers and premature ageing in the African in the Union. 

 My brother and I have previously presented many aspects of 

 this problem in some detail (Gillman and Gillman, 1951). 



I feel, at the outset, that it is important to make what 



* Since these data, which were presented during the discussion following the 

 papers by Dr. Landowne and Prof. Tunbridge, constitute a full paper, they are 

 being published here in that form. — Eds. 



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