DIETARY REQUIREMENTS FOR REPRODUCTION

Abstract

In all studies of dietary requirements for reproduction in relation to the health and vigor of succeeding generations one is constantly confronted with the problem of lactation.While fertility constitutes a phase of such studies, lactation certainly must also be included in the cycle of reproduction.In my early studies of reproduction (1919) on diets composed of purified food substances, employing butter fat as a source of Vitamin A, I have not encountered the sterility phenomenon (1).On such diets females gave birth to normal, healthy litters, but all the young died some time during the nursing period.I then concerned myself chiefly with solving the failures in lactation on purified synthetic diets.After several years of failures exhausting almost all possibilities of amino acid combinations, complete success in fertility and lactation was at last achieved by the addition of an ethereal extract of wheat embryo to a reproductiondeficient diet (2).In September, 1923, I reported results of experiments on reproduction conducted during the preceding 4 years which led me to suggest the existence of a specific vitamin for reproduction (3).Since no data were then available as to the possible lacta-