56 PHYSIOLOGY AND NATIONAL NEEDS 



during the siege. In the American civil war no 

 less than 30,714 cases of scurvy occurred among 

 white troops, and 383 deaths were attributed 

 directly to that disease. 



Artificially fed children are, as we shall see, even 

 nearer to the scurvy line ; and scurvy, incipient or 

 declared, must be regarded as an ever-present 

 danger, especially in the first year of life. 



Experimental Scurvy 



As happens frequently if not invariably in the 

 study of disease, little progress was made in our 

 exact knowledge of the conditions giving rise to 

 scurvy, whether in the adult or the infant, and of 

 the best remedies, until it became possible to 

 investigate the question in the laboratory by ex- 

 periments on animals. This important advance 

 was made in 1907 by the Norwegian investigator 

 Axel Holst,^ who found that guinea-pigs developed 

 a disease closely resembling human scurvy when 

 fed on a diet of grain and water. By supplementing 

 this diet with various materials the antiscorbutic 

 value of the latter can be gauged ; and further 

 research carried on during recent years in this 

 country at the Lister Institute under the direction 

 of Dr, Harriette Chick has developed this pro- 

 cedure into a quantitative method of some degree 



^ J. Hygiene, 1907, 7, 619 ; Hoist and Frolich, Zeitsch. Hygiene, 

 1912, 72, 1. 



