THE INFLUENCE OF FRESH AND AUTOCLAVED COWS' MILK ON 

 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEURITIS IN ANIMALS ^ 



By R. B. Gibson and Isabelo Concepcion 



(From the Department of Physiology, College of Medicine and Surgery, 



University of the Philippines) 



TWO PLATES AND 2 TEXT FIGURES 



The rapidly increasing use for infant feeding of canned whole 

 cows' milk in the Philippine Islands has suggested that we ought 

 to obtain some information as to whether or not the antineuritic 

 vitamines of milk are destroyed by heating. This is particularly 

 important, because of the large number of cases of infantile 

 beriberi that occur here and the probable existence of many 

 cases of latent infantile beriberi which may easily become acute.* 



We had expected that long-continued experimental observa- 

 tions on dogs and pigs fed on autoclaved milk would be compli- 

 cated by the development of scorbutic symptoms, for it is 

 generally believed that the antiscorbutic principles are easily 

 rendered ineffective by heat, and numerous observations have 

 been recorded indicating that heated milk induces scurvy in 

 infants.^ Hess and Fish * have reported that they have even 

 seen several cases of infantile scurvy as the result of feeding 

 milk which had been Pasteurized at 63° C. for only thirty minutes. 

 Scurvy may be produced experimentally in animals. Bolle ' 

 found that guinea pigs fed on boiled milk developed scurvy, 

 while those given raw milk did not. His experimental findings 

 were not confirmed by Bartenstein," Hart ^ fed monkeys on 

 canned milk, and they become typically scorbutic. Schmorl ^ 

 obtained scorbutic changes in dogs given a diet deficient in phos- 

 phates. Hoist and Frohlich ^ have observed typical scurvy in 

 guinea pigs by feeding oats, and Ingier " has produced scorbutic 



^ Received for publication May 31, 1916. 



^ Saleeby, Proceedings of the Philippine Islands Medical Association, This 

 Journal, Sec. B (1915), 10, 87. 



= Cf. Funk, Ergeh. d. Physiol. (1913), 13, 125. 



"Am. Journ. Dis. Child. (1914), 8, 385. 



^ Zeitschr. f. didt. u. physik. Therapie (1903), 6, 354. 



'Jahrb. f. Kinderh. (1905), 61,6. 



''Arch. f. path. Anat. u. Physiol, u. f. klin. Med. (Virchow) (1912), 208, 

 367. 



^ Arch. f. exp. Path. u. Pharm. (1913), 73, 313. 



' Zeitschr. f. Hyg. u. Infectionskrankh. (1912), 72, 1. 



^^ Journ. Exp. Med. (1915), 21, 525. 



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