THE PROMOTION OF GROWTH

October 19, 1912

Aside from such severe and familiar manifestations as scurvy and rickets, there are doubtless numerous nutritive disorders which may seriously upset the health and comfort of individuals owing to some hitherto unsuspected and supposedly insignificant deficiency in the dietary. The bearing of this has repeatedly been emphasized in the various discussions on the etiology and treatment of beriberi which have of late appeared in the columns of THE JOURNAL.¹ The fact is that man and animals subsist on plant and animal tissues which contain a multitude of other substances beside the proteins, fats and carbohydrates around which cluster those ideas about energy that have so long dominated all discussion of nutrition. The possibility of prolonged successful maintenance and development on mixtures of the isolated foodstuffs proper, that is, on so-called synthetic dietaries, has as yet received scanty experimental demonstration,² so that there has arisen a growing belief in the importance of some substance or substances commonly present in mixed food and vaguely included among the food “accessories,” for satisfactory nutritive progress.