Excerpt from Studies in Deficiency Disease The aim of this book is to present the reader with a consecutive account of the results of recent experimental researches into the nature of Deficiency Diseases, and to point out the application of these results to their prevention. The subject is one which, as I shall hope to show, concerns both the administrator and the practitioner of medicine. My own investigations, on which this book is mainly based, were originally undertaken in 1914, at a time when I was engaged in a study of the thyroid gland and its disorders. My object then was to ascertain the effects of deficient food on this organ. These studies were interrupted at the outbreak of war, and it was not until my return to India from active service, early in 1918, that I was able to resume them. The scope of the inquiry was then extended to include an investigation of the effects of deficient and ill-balanced foods on all other organs of the body. It was hoped that, in the course of such an inquiry, facts might emerge which would not only explain some of the manifestations of deficiency disease, but throw light also on problems relating to the place of the endocrine glands in the human economy. The methods of study adopted were experimental, gravimetric, and histo-pathological; the last being held to be of especial importance. For however necessary a knowledge of the normal structure and function of the organs of the body may be, it is not less necessary to possess a knowledge of the structural and functional changes induced in them by so fundamental a factor as faulty food. I have thus approached the study of Deficiency Disease from an aspect differing somewhat from that of other students of this subject whose object, as a rule, has been the induction in animals, by means of specially-devised food mixtures, of such maladies as scurvy, beri-beri, rickets, and pellagra. My own method, on the other hand, has been to observe the more general symptomatic and pathological effects of faulty food on the animal body as a whole, and thereby to ascertain what forms of human illness might reasonably be attributed to it. In this way I have been brought to the conclusion that much of the gastro-intestinal disorder so common at the present day, and much of the endocrine disorder probably almost equally common, though less readily recognizable, are attributable to deficient and ill-balanced food. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.