HYPERVITAMINOSIS A 605 



expedition led by Barentzoon to Nova Zembla became ill after having par- 

 taken of polar bear liver {Ursus (Thalassarctos) rtiaritima). In three cases, 

 the illness was so severe that there was loss of skin from head to foot. On 

 the other hand, Kane"'" reported inconsistent results of poisoning due to 

 bear liver. On two occasions, the whole company became ill after eating 

 it, but in other instances there were no untoward effects. Another report 

 is that of KoettUtz,"''^ who wrote of an English expedition to Franz Josef 

 Land between 1894 and 1897 in which all the members suffered as a conse- 

 quence of having eaten polar bear liver. Lindhard""^^ likewise reported 

 the poisoning of the members of another expedition after they had pre- 

 pared and eaten a stew made out of the liver, heart, and kidney of a 

 freshly-shot polar bear. All nineteen men who partook of the stew be- 

 came sick. The distress started in some cases within three hours after the 

 meal, and all the rest of the group became ill during the night. The symp- 

 toms of the poisoning included drowsiness, sluggishness, irritability or ir- 

 resistible desire to sleep, visual disturbances, tonic and clonic attacks of 

 cramp in the extremities, severe headache, and vomiting. During the 

 second twenty-four hours, the skin of ten of the nineteen men began to 

 peel around the mouth, and gradually over larger areas. In some cases 

 the peehng was confined to the face, but, in the case of three men, it in- 

 volved the entire surface from head to foot. Nansen"''^ observed that on 

 two occasions small amounts of bear liver were eaten without a deleterious 

 effect. This fact would indicate that the poisonous effects occur only 

 when large amounts of the liver are consumed. Doutt""^ found that the 

 ingestion of fresh bear liver resulted in \'iolent headaches, nausea, giddiness 

 and torpor. In 1943, Rodahl and Moore^^^ reported that three specimens 

 of bear liver contained 15,000 to 18,000 I.U. of vitamin A/g. wet weight, 

 while a sample of seal liver was found to contain 13,000 I.U. of vitamin A/g. 

 wet weight. When the Uver was fed to rats, a hypervitaminosis A occurred 

 whenever the consumption was high ; however, when only small amounts of 

 liver were eaten, no obvious symptoms of injury occurred. These data led 

 Rodahl and Moore^^'* to ascribe the poisonous action of bear liver to its 

 high content of vitamin A. In addition to the paper listed above, the 



'i"! E. K. Kane, Arctic Explorations in the Years 185^, 1855, Childs & Peterson, Phila- 

 delphia, 1856, pp. 392, 393. 



1102 R. Koettlitz; cited by W. S. Bruce and W. E. Clarke, Proc. Roij. Phys. Soc. Edin- 

 biirgh, U, 78-80 (1897-1898), p. 80. 



ii«3 J. Lindhard, Medd. Grfinland, 41, 459-468 (1913). 



1104 p Nansen, Blant set og hj0rn, Kristiania, 1924; cited by K. Rodahl and T. Moore, 

 Biochem. J., 37, 166-168 (1943), p. 167. 



>i»s J. K. Doutt, /. Mammalogy, 21, 356-357 (1940). 



