54 MILK SURVEY OF THE CITY OF ROCHESTER 



"And there is another type of deficiency disease, i. e., scurvy; a dis- 

 ease long known among sailors, among British soldiers in Mesopotamia, 

 and it has occurred among men fed on certain food where the diet con- 

 sists week after week of essentially non-perishable foods like white flour, 

 rolled oats, rice, peas, beans and potatoes, a certain amount of meat, and 

 foods cooked before they are fed. A patient feels chilly and the teeth 

 become more or less loose; the flesh of the body loses its peculiar prop- 

 erties and you can punch a great hole in the thigh with your finger and 

 the depression does not disappear promptly; the individual suffers con- 

 siderable pain. I will not attempt to detail a description of the disease ; 

 but it is a very serious disease ; it is occurring now more or less frequently 

 among individuals. 



"Those are the deficiency diseases. I mention these things to im- 

 press upon you the fact that as we examine human problems in nutrition 

 in the light of a great deal of exact data obtained by a very careful plan 

 of nutritive experiments on animals, we find that groups of human beings 

 in various parts of the world are actually failing in nutrition from one 

 cause or another, and we know now specifically the nature of the 

 deficiencies in their diet and specifically the results of those errors in their 

 nutrition. 



"There seems to be a close relationship between the general health 

 of fairly large groups of people and minor errors in the diet. We do 

 not have to have a diet so deficient as to lead to prompt failure, or to 

 lead to a development of a specific deficiency disease which brings the 

 individual into the hospital, or he dies, or attracts the attention of his 

 friends to the point where he receives medical attention. We do not have 

 to restrict our interpretation of faulty diet to faults of these magnitudes ; 

 we are in a position, I feel confident to say definitely, that there are 

 large groups of people who are deriving their diet largely from meat of 

 a muscle tissue, a type of wheat flour in the form of bread and other 

 articles, from potatoes, and from other cereals, such as rolled oats, rice, 

 together with beans and peas ; there are many people who make at least 

 90 or 95% of their table diet from cereals, tubers, and edible roots and 

 meat. Such diet in our experience with animals is never satisfactory 

 Such a diet derived from cereals, tubers, roots and meat may lead to 

 growth over a considerable period, but our experimental animals always 

 fail to reach a full adult size when they stop growing. Their capacity for 

 reproduction may be fairly good, but the mortality of their young is 

 always high ; and the adults themselves instead of living the full normal 

 span of life which the species is capable of, show signs of old age early 

 and have the specific signs characteristic of senility, poor condition, 

 feebleness, nervousness, and irritability, and a gradual decrease in body. 



