304 DIETETIC DEFICIENCY. 



varying nature of the different maladies to which the same type 

 of animal (man) is subject, suggests a variety of vitamines. 



Why should vitamine-hunger manifest itself in different 

 ways — as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, rickets, osteomalacia? Until 

 more definite evidence is available regarding the precise circum- 

 stances under which each disease occurs, we are not entitled to 

 assume that there are several distinct and separate vitamines each 

 ( when lacking) responsible for a dift'erent set of symptoms. At 

 the same time there is evidence that different vitamines exist, and 

 that the absence of these may manifest itself in diff'erent ways. 



A complete food contains all the constituents necessary for 

 health, growth, and reproduction, and any train of pathological 

 svmptoms arising from a dietetic deficiency may arise through a 

 lack of either a single constituent or s group of constituents. 



Variety in the nature of vitamines is indicated by the obser- 

 vation that substances protective against scurvy are much more 

 easily inactivated than those protective against beriberi. 



The antiscorbutic vitamine may often be destroyed \)y the 

 simple desiccation of substances containing it, while the beriberi 

 vitamine is not only more stable towards heating, but, as its pre- 

 sence in dried grains indicates, need not l)e seriously affected by 

 drying. The distinction is further indicated l)y the observation 

 of Hoist ( 191 1 ) that peas only protect guinea-pigs against scurvy 

 after germination, and of Fiirst (1912) that the oat grain, 

 on genuinating, develops an antiscorbutic substance which was 

 l)reviously lacking. Yet both oats and peas contain the beriberi 

 vitamine, and Funk makes the interesting suggestion that the 

 beriberi vitamine is the comi)aratively stable form in which 

 storage in the grain occurs, and that din-ing germination the beri- 

 beri vitamine is transformed into the most labile sctu'vy vita- 

 mine concerned with the active physiological functions of the 

 plant. The antiscorbutic vitamine jirotects against both scurvy 

 and beriberi, but the antilK-riberi vitamine d(^es not {protect against 

 scurvy. 



Funk has also recently (1914) shown that a diet of red 

 rice, fed to fowls, prohibits growth without, however, inducing 

 polyneuritis. 



How nian\- diff'erent vitamines there ma}' be is still a matter 

 of speculation. As yet, however, there is no clear evidence for 

 supposing that the maize vitamines are sufficiently different from 

 the rice vitamines to account for the difference between pellagra, 

 which is credited to a lack of some constituent in the milled pro- 

 ducts of the former cereal, and beriberi, which is established for 

 the polished grain of the latter. 



Apropos of the use of milled maize as main native diet on 

 the Rand mines, we luay mention that ])ellagra has not yet been 

 reported in Johannesburg, and that although cases of scin"v\'. 

 and scurvy of the beriberi type, are far from unknown, they 

 represent a very small statistical ]>ropoition of the total native 



