THE RELATION OF THE DIET TO PELLAGRA. 



By E. V. McCOLLUM, Ph.D. 



(Read April 25, igiQ-) 



Pellagra has long been suspected of being caused by faulty 

 diet, and the eating of maize, particularly moldy maize, has been 

 considered by some students of the disease to be the specific cause. 

 The studies of Dr. Goldberger of the Public Health Service have 

 eliminated corn as a causative agent in the etiology of this disease. 

 Funk in his enthusiasm over the " vitamine " hypothesis adopted the 

 view that not only beri-beri but scurvy, rickets, and pellagra were 

 each due to the lack of a specific "vitamine'' in the diet. He 

 further assumed, in order to explain the conflicting results in some 

 of his experimental work, that other " vitamines " necessary for 

 maintenance and for growth respectively are necessary in the food 

 supply. We have attempted during the last two years to discover 

 the exact nature of the deficiencies of such diets as are in common 

 use among the people of the cotton mill villages in the South where 

 pellagra is very common. We have employed what may properly 

 be described as a biological method for the analysis of a food stuii' 

 or of mixtures of foods. This consists in feeding any foodstuff 

 which is faulty in one or more respects to a group of animals, and 

 in other experimental groups the same food supplemented with 

 single or multiple food additions, such as pure protein, one or more 

 pure mineral salts, one or more of the still unidentified dietary 

 factors in the form of suitably prepared preparations. We have 

 throughout these studies employed as a working hypothesis the as- 

 sumption that the essential constituents of an adecpate diet are 

 protein of suitable quality and quantity, an adequate supply of the 

 necessary inorganic elements in suitable combinations, an adequate 

 energy supply in the form of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, and 

 two as yet chemically unidentified dietary essentials which we have 



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