STUDIES OF HYPOVITAMINOSIS A

Abstract

The investigations described in this paper, made chiefly with infants under 1 year old, were carried out with a view to detecting oscillations in the vitamin A content of living infants by a method which was worked out by C. Edmund. Our endeavors were successful in that we obtained a numerical expression for the quantity of vitamin A which is deposited in the organism of the child under different experimental conditions. Ever since C. E. Bloch, 1 in 1921, published his chart of the clinical aspects of manifest avitaminosis A, it has been supposed that this condition must be preceded by various preliminary conditions which it is impossible to diagnose. Despite the great progress made by means of experiments with animals, reliable and practical clinical methods for the quantitative observation of different latent stages have been missing. The questions which we have tried to solve are: Is it possible