SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS. —I. 365 
deteriorate rapidly, vide Eskimos of trading stations, negroes in New York. 
Heredity is therefore not a fundamental factor. 
The incidence of pyorrheea is reduced by giving abundant vitamin A 
(liver oil, green vegetables, etc.), especially during development. 
Prof. S. J. CowELL. 
Malnutrition in the sense of faulty feeding leads to disease, and disease 
leads to malnutrition in the sense of the production of a state of imperfect 
nutrition. It is therefore often difficult to decide how far wrong feeding is 
responsible for any observed case of poor physical development or lack of 
bodily fitness. Faulty diets lead to disease in a variety of ways. In some 
instances a deficiency of definite inorganic or organic substance in the food 
may cause a recognisable train of symptoms which may be cleared up by 
making good the deficiency. But similar deficiencies exerting their effects 
in early life may lead to faulty development of tissues which cannot sub- 
sequently be restored to their perfect state, thus predisposing to disease in 
later life. Other diseases may arise from some inherent or acquired in- 
capacity of the body to deal in the normal way with essential food factors 
actually supplied in the diet. When it is remembered that foods in common 
use may be sources of positively harmful substances as well as be deficient 
in beneficial substances, it is obvious that the construction of ideal diets 
requires greater knowledge than is available at the present time. 
Dr. H. H. Green.—wNutrition in relation to diseases of the larger 
domesticated animals. 
Amongst the economically important domesticated animals vitamin 
deficiency diseases are rare, even in animals in which they can be produced 
experimentally. In pigs reared under intensive conditions disorders 
arising from deficiency of vitamins A and D have been reported, but no 
avitaminosis has yet been reported in grazing animals however poor the 
pasture. 
On the other hand, mineral deficiencies are of enormous economic im- 
portance throughout the world, and on millions of acres of grazing land 
throughout the Empire the mineral content of the pasture, most commonly 
the phosphorus content, is the limiting factor in stock raising. Aphos- 
phorosis of cattle and sheep is a recognised syndrome somewhere in every 
continent, although it may vary in its manifestations from severe osteo- 
malacia and rickets, through reduced fertility occasioned by protective 
cessation of ovulation, down to slow development and poor economic 
returns in relation to the food supply apparently available. Indirectly 
linked to nutritional deficiency may come diseases of quite unexpected 
immediate origin, e.g. acute botulism in cattle displaying the osteophagia 
characteristic of aphosphorosis. 
Deficiencies of phosphorus, calcium, iodine, iron and copper in various 
parts of the world are discussed. 
Special attention is drawn to the different physiological reactions of 
different species of animal to the same type of dietary deficiency, and to 
the different etiology of diseases which present the same pathological 
picture. Thus the bovine develops rickets and osteomalacia on certain 
types of phosphorus deficient pasture upon which the equine remains 
apparently healthy. ‘The equine develops osteodystrophia fibrosa upon a 
calcium-phosphorus ratio which only induces slight osteoporosis in the bovine 
(CaO : P,O;, 1:3). The pathological picture of extreme aphosphorosis 
in the bovine is the same as D-avitaminosis in the human subject and in 
