44 PHYSIOLOGY AND NATIONAL NEEDS 



to which maize-eating communities are prone. I 

 allude to pellagra. I do not propose to discuss it, 

 but to show how wide a ground the subject of this 

 lecture may ultimately be found to cover. I would 

 point out that the many theories as to the origin of 

 pellagra which have previously held the ground 

 seem, at the moment, to be giving way under the 

 pressure of facts and to be yielding to the view that 

 pellagra too is due to the absence of some specific 

 necessary nutritional factor from the diet. 



It would be grave error to deny that such facts 

 and considerations as have been now discussed are 

 of practical and even of national importance. Our 

 troops abroad during this war have suffered from 

 scurvy, as they have done in previous wars. Wher- 

 ever bodies of men — soldiers, sailors, or explorers — 

 are long removed from the sources of fresh foods 

 scurvy is wellnigh inevitable. But the severe 

 sufferings which were undergone during the siege of 

 Kut, for instance, might never have occurred if the 

 authorities responsible for the equipment of the 

 expedition had had real belief, such as grows from 

 scientific study, in the importance of antiscor- 

 butics rather than the half -faith which is common, 

 especially had they possessed the quantitative 

 information available as to the distribution of the 

 antiscorbutic factor in different materials. 



At home the variety in our foods may be sufficient 

 to secure that actual deficiency disease shall, so far 



