Experimental rickets : the effect of cereals and their interaction with other factors of diet and environment in producing rickets / by Edward Mellanby.

  • Edward Mellanby
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Experimental rickets : the effect of cereals and their interaction with other factors of diet and environment in producing rickets / by Edward Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    this period is too short to allow clear deduction as to the specific etlect ot the substance on bone-calcification. Hie question arises as to whether the rickets-producing effect of tne saponifiable substances in oatmeal evident in Exp. 805 (Table 211 is a general fatty acid action or whether it is due to the specific tatty acids of oatmeal or to some substance associated with the tatty acids. Most of the feeding experiments with fatty acids do not suo-o-est that ordinary acids m general have a rickets-producing effect,^ For instance. Lander and Fagan [42] fed pigs on diets containing the tatty acids of coco-nut oil, and Burns and Sharpe [43] fed men on diets containing the fatty acids of hardened whale oil. Their results indicated that within limits fatty acids are dealt with in a similar way to fats themselves, and did not lead to the belief that the addition to the diet of small quantities of ordinary fatty acid either deprives the animal of much calcium or is responsible for the chronic ill health and rickets such as appears to be brought about by the fatty acids of oatmeal. On the other hand, it is possible that ratty acids as such might have a noxious influence under the specific experimental conditions of this investigation, and more especially when the intake of fat-soluble vitamin is very small. If ns is not the case there remains the possibility that the oatmeal tatty acids contain some specific rickets-producing member. t may be asked whether there was any evidence in these experiments of the toxic factor in wheat which, according to Hart Miller, and McCollum [41], produces malnutrition and degenerative c ranges m the nerves of pigs. The effects of the experimental diets are often so widespread, and include so many abnormalities in different organs of the body, that it is difficult to say definitely that wheat germ had any specific action in producing symptoms. In particular, most cases. of severe rickets become weak and often paralysed,, especially in the hind legs. In some experiments, however, it seemed that commercial wheat germ had a peculiar effect of its own. For instance, both in 803 (saponifiable sub¬ stances of wheat germ) and 807 (wheat germ) the animals developed a peculiar nervous condition, the most obvious feature of which was the inability to walk or run straight. The animals seemed to lose their sense of balance and their heads moved from side to side when they attempted to walk, and finally they ell over. . At a later period they were unable to stand, partly because of their loss of balance and partly because of muscular weakness. These . conditions were not obviously related to the development of rickets because, as explained above, 803 was practically free from rickets and yet was the more affected of the two dogs. The other animals of this litter, even 805 (saponifiable substances oatmeal), which developed severe rickets, did not show symPtoms of unbalance seen in the germ-eating dogs, although 805 developed great muscular weakness. In five other cases where germ or ether or acetone extract of germ has been in¬ cluded in the diet of puppies notes were made to the effect that the animals show lack of balancing power. There are several cases, however, where there was no such development under these or