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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    interchangeable, so are the cereal influence and the radiations opposec m ien action. The same kind of antagonism seems to extend to other organs, and more especially to the formation and activity of the voluntary muscle (Clifford, Surie and E. Mellanbv Communication to Physiological Society 1923, Nov.). It would be interesting if it should prove that there is a specific substance interfering with calcification related in some wav to the tatty content of oatmeal, especially in view of the fact that the anti¬ rachitic factor is classed as a fat-soluble vitamin. However, it has been pointed out above that, unlike fat-soluble vitamin, which is said to be associated more closely with the unsaponifiable fraction the rickets-producing substance in oatmeal is absent from this traction. It is clear that just as the subject of nutrition has had to be revised m the light of recent work on vitamins, so also the study of the action of cereals described above, bringing evidence of another substance and possibly a class of substances, hitherto unknown which play an important part in the animal economy, must also recei\ e due consideration in nutritional problems. It would appear that even the simplest problems of nutrition are far more complicated than has been previously imagined. For instance, the question of mineral salt balance has generally been considered as a self-contained subject. But even in the case of calcium it is now evident that calcium metabolism is controlled apart from salt balance, by a series of dietetic factors including, among others, the anti¬ rachitic vitamin, and the substance in oatmeal and probably other cereals. In addition, the environment also influences the same meta¬ bolic process by means of the ultra-violet radiations to which the organism and, in some cases, the foodstuff is exposed. It would appear useless to attempt to explain the deposition of calcium phos¬ phate in bone in terms, of mineral salt metabolism until more is known about the dietetic and environmental factors which control so powerfully the distribution of these elements and the changes undergone by them in the body. & Evidence is accumulating which suggests that the subject of toxic products in cereals may be one of great importance. In the light of this, work demonstrating the interfering action of cereals on bone- ca cification, and the experiments in which ben-beri-like symptoms were produced by Hart, Miller, and McCollum [41] in pigs by feed¬ ing with whole grain, it appears not improbable that the symptoms and signs of pellagra found among maize-eating populations may be aue, partly at least, to some toxic agent in the maize. It is possible that this aspect of nutrition may be developed and its importance emphasized when further attention is given to it. It is an interesting fact that toxic conditions which can lie produced or are associated, with different cereals only become evident under certain conditions, and that other dietetic factors when eaten in sufficient amounts are able to antagonize and prevent the detri¬ mental results. The recognition of 4 deficiency diseases ’ and their prev ention in.some cases by vitamins was responsible for the intro¬ duction into dietetic phraseology of the words 4 protective foodstuffs ’. Foodstuffs rich in anti-rachitic vitamin are certainly 4 protective 5 in