50 



body, (not evolved in if but derived from the food), it is but natural 

 that, especially in times of scarcity, a vitamin-poor food should be 

 deleterious to the bodj, even though not causing actual illness. 



Comparative experiments on the nutritive value of brown- and 

 white-bread have repeatedly been undertaken, also when vitamins 

 were not thought of. As early as about seven decades back Magendie 

 observed how a dog, fed exclusively on white-bread, lost flesh, got 

 weaker, and weaker, and succumbed after 40 days; another dog, 

 fed on bread made from the whole wheat, kept in good health. 

 Similar results were latterly achieved in Hofmeister's laboratory 

 with mice. The evidence from such experiments may be disqualified 

 by contending that the laboratory animals actually starve, because 

 they refuse to eat white-bread much sooner than brown-bread. Those 

 nevertheless who believe in animal instinct will not wholly repudiate 

 the significance of this phenomenon. 



We pieferred to experiment with fowls, first of all because they 

 react most indubitably upon vitamin-poor food with the typical 

 aspect of polyneuritis and do not succumb under equivocal symptoms; 

 and secondly because when the appetite lessens, they readily submit 

 to forced feeding. Forcil)le feeding is a method also employed in 

 poultry -yards. Intense inanition may in this way be prevented up 

 to the first indication of the disease, viz. atony of the muscle layer 

 of the crop. This causes a more tardy discharge of the crop, so 

 that the ordinary daily allowance cannot be gone through. The 

 typical weakness in the leg-muscles, reminding so forcibly of a 

 similar disturbance attending beri-beri, generally ensues only after 

 some days, sometimes weeks. 



Here we also wish to observe that fowls are no more able 

 to digest the cellulose of the bran than man is. The thick walls 

 of the cells of the so-called aleu rone-layer, in which chiefly protein 

 and fat are contained, are left intact in their digestive canal. The 

 vitamins, however, as said above, are easily isolated from the bran. 

 The meal, from which the Standard bread was baked, was composed 

 according to the governmental prescription for the white-bread of 

 60 7ü iidand wheat- and (or) rye-flour, 10 7o American flour and 30% 

 potato-meal; for brown-bread of 70 7o unboltered wheat- and (or) 

 rye-meal, 25 7o potato-meal and 5 7o 8'»''ts and (or) pollard. Potato- 

 meal is too pure and, therefore, too one-sided a food. The other 

 nutritive constituents of the potato — protein, salts and also vitamins — 

 get lost in the preparation. They putrefy our public waters. It would 

 have been much more reasonable indeed, to eke bread-mea.l out 

 with powder from dried potatoes, instead of potato-meal. On the 



