VITAMIN C 207 



seed there must be present something which plays the part of a "resting 

 stage" or reserve form of the antiscorbutic vitamin and which in turn 

 is transformed into vitamin C when the seed sprouts. 



Vitamin C in Animal Tissues and in Milk. — In the work of Parsons 

 (1920) previously cited and in other investigations it has been made 

 clear that the liver may be much richer in vitamin C than the muscles. 

 Thus Parsons found that the Hvers of rats which had been for a long 

 time on "scorbutic" food contained enough antiscorbutic vitamin to 

 be readily demonstrable in experiments with guinea pigs, whereas their 

 muscles did not, nor could any antiscorbutic effect be obtained in paral- 

 lel experiments in which fish muscle was fed. 



Blood probably also carries more vitamin C than does muscle. 

 Hess (1920) suggests that blood may be comparable with milk in 

 its vitamin C content. This is not a sufficiently high concentration 

 to make blood transfusion an important means of supplying the vitamin 

 to a scurvy patient (Hess, 1920, p. 76). In fact the body as a whole 

 seems to have only a very limited capacity for storage of vitamin C. 

 Previous liberal feeding with antiscorbutic food does not enable guinea 

 pigs to survive much longer when subsequently placed upon a scor- 

 butic diet than do animals which have received merely an ample amount 

 for the maintenance of health. (Harden and Zilva, 1918b; Hess, 1920, 

 p. 75.) This is not inconsistent with the fact that a man or animal 

 whose food has been deficient in vitamin C and who is therefore already 

 in a condition of latent scurvy may develop the disease more quickly 

 when placed upon a wholly scorbutic diet than does an individual whose 

 previous food supply has been normal. It is evident that in general 

 we must look to the daily food supply rather than to any stores carried 

 in the body for the antiscorbutic vitamin needed in nutrition. 



Muscle tissues, ordinary meats, are so poor in antiscorbutic vitamin 

 that attempts to show its presence by experiments upon guinea pigs 

 have given negative results. Chick, Hume and Skelton (Hess, 1920, p. 

 168) found that 10 cubic centimeters daily of raw beef juice failed to 

 protect guinea pigs. Butcher, Pierson and Biester (1919) were not 

 able to observe any antiscorbutic effect from raw lean beef fed to 

 guinea pigs. On the other hand, observations upon human scurvy have 

 sometimes indicated that meat, if eaten sufficiently fresh, raw, or 

 "rare," and in large quantities, has an appreciable though small anti- 

 scorbutic value. Thus the fresh beef and horse meat eaten by the 

 British troops in Mesopotamia is believed to have been largely respon- 

 sible for the fact that they did not develop scurvy as did the Indian 

 troops serving with them. In 1877 the British Arctic Survey Committee 



