VITAMIN REQUIREMENTS OF NURSING YOUNG

Abstract

In previous publications, one of us (B. S.)¹ presented extensive evidence that the vitamin B requirements for normal lactation are at least three times as great as that for optimum growth. Recently he demonstrated that the large requirements of vitamin B for lactation are due to the inability of the nursing mother to secrete vitamin B quantitatively in the milk, since only a fraction of the vitamin B intake of the lactating mother is transferred by the mammary gland to the milk.² In this communication, we report further work which corroborates the former observations and we also report observations made on certain pathologic lesions encountered in the polyneuritic state of the nursing young of the albino rat which have received inadequate amounts of vitamin B, namely, hemorrhages in the osteogenetic tissues and in certain of the viscera. A preliminary report of this work was presented before the American