458 Messrs. W. Cramer, A. H. Drew, and J. C. Mottram. 



soluble vitamin and the platelets, is afforded by the behaviour of platelets 

 when the animals recover from vitamin A deficiency. This is illustrated in 

 fig. 4. When the fat-soluble vitamin is supplied again, the platelets increase 

 with extraordinary rapidity. Here, again, there is a close parallelism between 

 the recovery from the eye lesion and the increase in the number of platelets. 

 Thus, in rat 277, the eye lesion completely cleared up within a week, and the 

 number of platelets increased from 380,000 to 870,000. In rat 250, with the 



18O 



J.60 



80 



60 



N° 25 



XXX 



N° 214 a 



N°273 9 



(XJ=EY£ LESION DISAPPEARS 



— Vn 'AMINE. A PRESENT 



<-l WEEK ■* 



X- EYE. LESION 

 Vl T AMINE A ABSENT. — 



Fig. 4. — Effect of adding vitamin A to the deficient diet. The figure illustrates the 

 parallelism between the rate of increase in the number of platelets and the recovery 

 from infection. 



low value of 220,000 platelets and the presence of bacteria in the blood as 

 demonstrated by a film preparation, the platelets increased to almost 1,000,000 

 within three weeks, the eye lesion became completely cured within two weeks, 

 and the bacteria disappeared from the blood. The reverse condition is 

 represented by rat 386, which was very small and thin and emaciated, and 

 which, in addition to having the eye lesion, developed an abscess in the neck. 

 When cod-liver oil was given the eye lesion cleared up very slowly, and the 

 general nutritive condition of the animal did not improve very much ; as the 



