1470 
the outbreak of the disease. This calls to mind my old experience 
that fowls, suffering from polyneuritis, recovered after the admini- 
stration of meat only, while healthy animals, fed on meat and 
starch, developed the disease, from which I concluded then that its 
origin is associated with a starch diet. Caspar: and Moszkowskr *) 
also found that pigeons fed on hen’s eggs, dextrose and salt remained 
healthy and gained in weight, but were attacked by polyneuritis 
when this diet was supplemented with polished rice; however, they 
declared it to be intoxication, emanating from the rice and even 
attached to these tests the value of an experimentum crucis in 
support of their view. 
After what has been said above it is needless to add that we 
cannot accept this view without further consideration. We, therefore, 
sought for an experimentum crucis relative to the question: poison- 
hypothesis or deficiency-hypothesis, in another direction, and sup- 
posed to have detected it in abundantly drenching the starving 
organism with water. 
If the neuritis were caused by a poison, the disease could not 
be expected to manifest itself, ingestion of poison being excluded 
in starvation, while an occasional endogenous poison (product of a 
disturbed metabolism) would most likely not accumulate in the 
body, but would be removed together with the water along the 
intestine and other excretory organs. For the same reason, however, 
the body would to some degree be deprived of vitamins, and if 
polyneuritis were associated with this deficiency alone, the disease 
would presumably break out. 
Our drenching experiments were conducted in the following way : 
Fowls had the crops filled with water instead of food twice daily; 
besides this they were given subcutaneously three times a day 
10 ee. physiological salt solution (or Rincer’s fluid without glucose). 
It now appeared that fasting in conjunction with drenching 
produced polyneuritis, as established clinically by our diagnosis as 
well as through microscopical examination of the nerves that had 
been treated after Marcui’s method. It was remarkable that, just 
as with a rice diet, the crop when filled with water, did not empty 
during the last days bejore the onset of the disease, so that the 
supply of water had to be discontinued. After all the aspect of the 
disease was in every respect like that appearing after a one-sided 
diet, only in the latter case the emaciation is not so considerable. 
A positive result was also achieved in the following experiments, 
1) Berl. Klin. W. Bnd. 50, S. 1515, 1918. 
