DIETETIC DEFICIENCY. 3O5 



labour employed. The natives, of course, are not fed upon highly 

 milled products, and althouj^h we have ourselves fed considerable 

 numbers of pigeons exclusively upon the native meals, we have 

 been unable to produce polyneuritis. 



At the same time there is no doubt that the vitamines of maize 

 are located in the grain in nuich the same way as they are in rice, 

 i.e., in the external layers. We have produced polyneuritis in 

 pigeons fed U|>on " samp " (rasped mealies) in as short a time as 

 on polished rice, and have satisfied ourselves that at least the 

 high-grade milling-})roducts of maize (table meals) are deficient 

 in vitamine. The deficient character of such preparations is, how- 

 ever, of little practical consequence, since the highly milled pre- 

 parations, being more expensive than the crude meals, are only 

 used by well-to-do people, whose diet is sufficiently varied to 

 ensure an ample vitamine intake from other sources. 



Laniziektc. — This disease of cattle, peculiar, so far as is 

 known, to South Africa, but representing, now that rinderpest 

 and East Coast fever are well under control, the most serious 

 problem of the stock-raising farmers of the country, has also 

 been maintained to be an avitaminosis. 



Deficiency theories of lamziekte have been on the South 

 African market for a long time, and it is interesting to note that 

 these have followed the prevailing fashions. The earlier calcium 

 and phosphorus deficiency hypotheses correspond to the earlier 

 theories for rickets, and for scurvy and beriberi. Lastly, the 

 conception of vitamine-hunger was put forward by Funk in 

 London, and, very enthusiastically, by Stead in this country. 



Theiler, in his last " Report of the Director of Veterinary 

 Research," (1912) discountenanced the idea that lamziekte was 

 a deficiency disease, and, without specific reference to the vita- 

 mines, argued on general grounds that " lack of ^nutrition " 

 failed to explain the facts observed in connection with the disease. 

 At the same time many of the observations discordant with such 

 a theory were not specifically experimental in character, while 

 the view expressed by certain farmers that the disease was less 

 prevalent amongst cattle not confined exclusively to veld pasture 

 left legitimate room for difference of opinion. The question was 

 therefore again taken up experimentally by the \''eterinary Re- 

 search Division, and the vitamine hypothesis subjected to direct 

 test. 



As applied to lamziekte, the hypothesis expressed by Funk is 

 that the vitamines naturally ])resent in the grass on affected areas 

 are destroyed by long-continued drought, and that, as a conse- 

 quence, vitamine-hunger arises in cattle exclusively fed upon the 

 parched jjasture. He drew an analogy between lamziekte in 

 the bovine and beriberi in the human, and suggested that lam- 

 ziekte belonged to the beriberi class of deticiencv diseases. Hq 

 therefore advised that yeast be tried as a ])ro])hy]actic measure. 



We do not propose to go into the details of the experiments 

 of the Veterinary Research Division on the subject, since these 



B 



