568 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.38 



This book contains essentially the same material, with some additional fig- 

 ures showing the use of camp cooking devices, as that given in the British 

 Manual of Military Cooking.* 



New Mexico cookery, Alice S. Tipton {Santa Fe, N. Mex.: State, Land Off., 

 1916, pp. 6Jf). — This booklet gives directions for the preparation of certain New 

 Mexican dishes from the native food products, including the use of New 

 Mexican chili, herbs and garlic, olive oil, hulled corn and meal, and the pinto 

 or frijole bean. , 



Comparative statistics on foodstuffs and fuel for four years as shown in 

 a budget of the annual cost of living of a family of five persons, O. H. 

 Younger (Olympi<i, Wash.: State Bur. Labor, 1917, pp. S). — A table showing 

 the annual cost of foodstuffs and fuel for a family of five for the years 1914, 

 1915, 1916, 1917 in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, and the State of Washington ex- 

 clusive of these large cities is given. 



The role of vitamins in the diet, T. B. Osborne and L. B. Mendel {Jour. 

 Biol. Chem., SI {1917), No. 1, pp. 149-163, figs. 4).— This article discusses the 

 work of Rohmann, who has taken vigorous exception to the vitamin hypothesis. 

 The authors cite experiments to prove the necessity for at least two formerly 

 unappreciated components of the adequate dietary. These occur in natural 

 foods. 



" Despite the success which has attended the use of yeast as an adjuvant to 

 otherwise inadequate food mixtures, notably in the case where casein or 

 edestin furnished the bulk of the protein, such yeast-containing ' artificial ' 

 food mixtures have not yet demonstrated a nutrient efficiency equivalent to 

 that manifested through the use of ' protein-free milk ' or certain other natur- 

 ally occurring food products like cottonseed meal. The refusal of some rats to 

 eat an adequate amount of the yeast-containing foods has proved a stumbling 

 block to exact comparisons. Although some of the animals brought up on the 

 yeast-containing foods have given birth to young, thus far none of the latter 

 have been reared." 



The " vitamin " hypothesis and deficiency diseases. — A study of experi- 

 mental scurvy, B. V. McCollum and AV. Pitz {Jour. Biol. Chem., 31 {1917), 

 No. 1, pp. 229-253, figs. 11 ) . — " The observations reported in this paper furnish 

 definite support for the idea that scurvy in the guinea pig is not the result 

 of the deficiency of a specific protective substance. . . . The first cause 

 of the disease is associated with the retention of feces owing to diets of 

 unfavorable physical character and debility of the digestive tract through 

 stretching and contact with irritating and toxic putrefaction products of 

 bacterial origin." 



The authors provisionally adopt the view " that unfavorable proportions 

 among the well-recognized constituents of the diet as well as of the two but 

 recently appreciated ones, together with unsatisfactory physical factors and 

 injury wrought through the agency of microorganisms inhabiting the alimentary 

 tract, will account for all the observed types of pathological functioning which 

 specific substance (water-soluble B) in the diet. 



The authors agree with Funk that polyneuritis is caused by a deficiency of a 

 specific substance (water-soluble B) in the diet. 



" Since diets containing liberal amounts of butter fat (fat-soluble A) permit 

 the development of scurvy, rickets, and polyneuritis, there would seem to be 

 but one syndrome, pellagra, which one might possibly refer to a shortage of 

 this second unidentified dietary factor. There is, however, not the slightest 



» London : Govt., 1910, reprinted 1915, pp. 82, pi. 1, figs. 3. 



