AVITAMINOSIS IN THE COURSE OF DIABETES

Among the many diseases classified as avitaminosis, beriberi and keratomalacia have received considerable attention from both the clinical and the experimental points of view. Although the exact determining cause of beriberi has not been absolutely proved, there seems to be a unanimity of opinion that vitamin deficiency in food is an essential if not the sole factor in its genesis. The human feeding experiments with decorticated rice conducted by Fraser and Stanton1would indicate this; and animal experiments conducted by Eijkman in Java2have established the fact that polyneuritis gallinarum in fowls, which is analogous in a number of symptoms to human beriberi, results from a deficiency of neuritis-preventing vitamin in decorticated rice. The classic experiments of E. V. McCollum3and his co-workers, Osborne and Mendel,4have established that keratomalacia is essentially a disease following a lack of the fat-soluble vitamin A. In this country, patients