48 McCOLLUM— RELATION OF DIET TO PELLAGRA. 



importance with protein, and that if the optimum well-being is to 

 be attained the diet must be rightly constituted with respect to all 

 its parts. In addition to this the prompt elimination of the fecal 

 residues is essential and is a great relief to the tissues of the entire 

 body. 



With an understanding such as we now have of the nature of 

 the faults of diets of different types, and an appreciation of the 

 fundamental importance of deriving the constituents of the diet 

 from the right sources, this being of much greater importance than 

 composition as revealed by chemical analysis, one is in a position to 

 interpret the relation of pellagra to diet. 



Goldberger has emphasized the fact that the diet of those living 

 in districts in which pellagra is common is lacking in sufficient 

 amounts of certain foodstuffs, especially milk, eggs, meats, and the 

 legume seeds. In many instances bolted wheat flour, degerminated 

 corn-meal, polished rice, sugar, syrups, or molasses, sweet potatoes, 

 and meat, principally pork, form almost the entire list of foods 

 eaten by families during the winter season, at the end of which new 

 attacks of pellagra are regularly seen. From what has been said it 

 will be evident that the diet of the pellagrous is deficient in four re- 

 spects, and that the nature of these is well understood. They are 

 the deficiencies of the plant products which belong to the storage 

 organ group, but more pronounced because of the prominent place 

 which milling products, which represent the endosperm of the seed, 

 find in such diets. Products such as bolted fiour, degerminated 

 corn-meal, and polished rice are decidedly poorer in inorganic ele- 

 ments than are the seeds from which they are derived ; their pro- 

 teins appear to be of poorer quality than are those of the cell-rich 

 structures near the periphery, or of the germ, and they are almost 

 devoid of fat-soluble A and very poor in water-soluble B. Wliereas 

 diets derived from whole seeds, tubers, and edible roots contain 

 sufficient phosphorus to meet the requirements of the most rapidly 

 growing species of animal, such as the rat. and the limiting inor- 

 ganic elements are calcium, sodium and chlorine, it may be that in 

 diets in which the degerminated and decorticated cereal products are 

 employed in liberal amounts, and where in addition starch, sugar 

 and molasses are regularly used freely, phos^jhorus or iron or both 

 may likewise become important deficiencies. 



