SOME ASPECTS O F bIETABOLIS?\Z AND DEFICIESCY DISEASES X S D T E E I R TREATPIZENT BY LIGHT ASD IRON PREPARBTIOSS BY N. R. DHAR
In the previous papers1 I have suggested that pernicious anaemia, cancer of the tongue and stomach, leukaemia and Hodgkin's disease are likely to be deficiency diseases. I have also shown that most deficiency diseases like scurvy, beri-beri, pellagra, malnutritional oedema, rickets, pernicious anaemia, etc., are associated with gastrointestinal disturbances. This fact supports my contention that deficiency diseases are caused mainly by the want of proper metabolism or oxidation of food materials through the lack of accelerators or promotors like vitamins, internal secretions, etc., which accelerate the oxidation of food materials by air in presence of oxidising enzymes in the body. I have also emphasised that sunlight ought to prove efficacious in deficiency and metabolism diseases. In this communication I shall adduce further evidences in favour of the above views and consider other aspects of deficiency diseases. Epidemic Dropsy at Allahabad, India In the last cold weather there were about two hundred cases of epidemic dropsy amongst the Bengali community of Allahabad (India). The staple food of these people is polished rice and fish curry cooked in mustard oil, and this community mainly consists of lower middle class people. h similar outbreak of epidemic dropsy occurred a t Calcutta amongst the Bengalis in the months of September, October, and November 1926. Some people believed that owing to improper storing of rice, some kind of fungus grew on the rice which acted as a poison and caused the disease. It should be remembered that this view regarding the origin of epidemic dropsy and beri-beri is more or less identical with the theory of the origin of pellagra advanced by Lombroso and Bellardini in 1871. These authors believed that pellagra was caused by the consumption of damaged maize either by damp or being insufficiently cured and in that state acts as a medium for the growth of poisonous fungi of different variety. There is another school of thought which believed that the occurrence of epidemic dropsy is due to a poison present in mustard oil; the mustard seed is supposed to contain another seed as an impurity similar to that occurring in lentil which causes 1ath)Tism. I n order to test the above view, pigeons in our laboratories were fed on samples of suspected rice and oil but no indication of epidemic dropsy was detectable among these birds. From a critical examination of typical cases ' D h a r : Chemie der Zelle und Gewebe, 12. 2 1 7 , 3. Phys. Chem., 29, 376 (1925).
225,
286 (1925); 13, 119, 209 (1926);
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and the corresponding diet it appears that this attack of epidemic dropsy va' due to malnutrition and want of vitamins aided by humidity and insanitary living conditions. There were no cases of epidemic dropsy in those families which were taking germinating grains and other seeds. I t is interesting to note that the working classes in India who have more or less an outdoor life. and eat several raw things like onions, radishes, cucumbers, grains, maize,, ete., do not suffer from deficiency and metabolism diseases, bad terth, etc., as much as the lower middle classes who have to lead an indoor life brcausc of their clerical and other indoor duties and do not get as much exercise and sunlight as the working classes do. Mgreovcr, these lower middle class people cannot afford to have really good meals consisting of eggs, milk, meat, buttrr, fish, bread, etc. Vnlike the working classes they can not stand raw thing.
