568 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



to 180, or 240 to 270 pounds. In addition, they were "allowed" to 

 carry anything like their own equipment, such as their blankets, 

 hatchet, pipe, tobacco, mosquito net, spare clothes, and even a present 

 for the wife. 23 "Three-piece" men were rare, famous from Edmonton 

 to the Arctic Ocean, and well-nigh Dominion heroes. 



One of the fears expressed regarding a pemmican diet arose at the 

 beginning of World War II, when the military and naval physicians 

 worried about the development of ketosis in the average soldier or 

 sailor — especially if he received only a fat and protein diet without 

 carbohydrates to serve as a source of quickly available glycogen (ani- 

 mal sugar as it exists in the blood). When the available supply of 

 glycogen gets low, one undergoes a form of nerve poisoning by the 

 ketones, which are one of the products of fat metabolism and which 

 are very active chemically since they characteristically have only an 

 atom of oxygen to one of carbon and are really "predatory" on the 

 nervous system. Peary and other Arctic explorers offset this by using 

 a supplement of ship's biscuit, but the hard-working trappers and 

 voyagers seemed to have grown into adjustment to the high-fat low- 

 carbohydrate diet as a matter of long conditioning. 



While some military subjects on an experimental pemmican diet 

 during World War II developed the odor of ketones on their breath, 

 apparently the only ones who believed themselves seriously affected 

 were those who had been informed of such a possibility in advance. 24 

 Ketosis, in the extreme, is what causes athletes to collapse at the end 

 of a strenuous race, but it is quickly overcome by the introduction of 

 glucose into the circulation. Under ordinary military conditions, 

 where one would choose in an emergency between the consumption of 

 pemmican or the possibility of starvation, pemmican seems to be far 

 the more intelligent selection. Men accustomed to eating it would 

 scarcely exchange such food for anything else, as noted later. 



A second worry arose over scurvy. This last disease is caused by a 

 deficiency of vitamin C in the diet. Nearly a century ago it threatened 

 winter life on the frontier, and was not a disease expected solely at 

 sea or in the barren north. Col. Philippe Regis de Trobriand 

 struggled against it among his troops in Dakota in the winter of 

 1867-68. He begged for cattle for fresh meat as early in the fall as 

 September for, he said, "some cases of scurvy have already broken out 

 in the garrison as a result of using salted meat and being without vege- 

 tables too long." 25 Many times authorities believed that scurvy was 



23 Stefansson to author, February 16, 1955. 

 * Interview of Col. E. C. Mattick by author, January 28, 1942. 

 "Phillipe St. Regis de Trobriand, Military life in Dakota, ed. by Lucile M. 

 Kane, p. 71, St. Paul, 1951. 



