70 THE VITAMINS 



Physiological Properties and Relation to Nutrition and Health 



The nervous symptoms induced by a shortage of the (antineuritic) 

 vitamin B are so striking and respond so readily to treatment that they 

 have tended to obscure the other effects resulting from a partial or total 

 deficiency of this vitamin in the diet. Attention was called to this by 

 McCarrison (1919). Working first with pigeons, he was able to demon- 

 strate a certain parallelism between the effects of simple starvation and 

 lack of vitamins. In cases uncompHcated by bacterial invasion, both 

 simple starvation and a diet of polished and autoclaved rice brought 

 about loss in weight, a progressive fall in body temperature, and slowing 

 of respiration. The weights of the various organs of the body imme- 

 diately after death showed atrophy of the thymus, testicle, spleen, ovary, 

 pancreas, heart, liver, kidneys, stomach and thyroid in decreasing 

 order; and marked hypertrophy of the adrenals. The pituitary gland 

 and the brain showed no change in the starved pigeons, while on the 

 vitamin-deficient diet a slight tendency to enlargement of the pituitary 

 was noted in the male birds and slight atrophy of the brain in both male 

 and female. The central nervous system as a whole underwent little 

 atrophy, the paralytic symptoms being mainly due to impaired func- 

 tional activity of the nerve cells rather than to their degeneration. 



Recently (1928) Marrian confirmed the earlier observations on the 

 hypertrophy of the adrenals in starving pigeons receiving vitamin B 

 and in pigeons forcibly fed on an artificial vitamin B-free diet, and in 

 addition obtained evidence indicating that while a deficiency of both 

 vitamin B and G is involved in the hypertrophy occurring in the vitamin 

 B-deficient pigeons, the deficiency of B is of greater importance than 

 of G. He suggested that in starvation the changes occur mainly in the 

 medulla and in vitamin B deficiency in the cortex. 



In a more detailed study of the histological changes in the intes- 

 tines of pigeons on vitamin-deficient diets, McCarrison (1919c) re- 

 ported the chief microscopical changes observed at autopsy to be 

 atrophy and congestion, the latter more largely confined to the upper 

 part of the alimentary tract, and tending to open the way to systemic 

 infection from the diseased intestine. Interpreted in terms of bowel 

 function the derangements to which these pathological changes may 

 ultimately lead were classified as impairment of the neuromuscular 

 control of the bowel ; impaired transport of the intestinal contents along 

 the alimentary canal ; impairment of assimilative power ; impairment of 

 secretory function; impaired protective resources leading to infection 

 of the mucous membrane of the bowel by pathogenic saprophites or 



