By force of circumstances, greater attention is at present being directed toward dietary problems than ever before. The growing disproportion between a practically stationary income and an increasing cost of foodstuffs has resulted in considerable hardship during the past few years, and has brought with it an accentuation of diseases commonly associated with deficiencies
in diet, such as pellagra and scurvy. Profound alterations in the labor market have led, furthermore, to a far-reaching migration from southern agricultural to the northern industrial centers. Under such circumstances it is appropriate at this time to discuss briefly the recent pellagra statistics, and to call attention to the widespread distribution of the disease in the United States.
That the diet is of basic import, either as a contributing factor or as the etiologic agent in producing pellagra, has been generally accepted by observers, although it must be admitted that no one interpretation of