HUMAN EXPERIMENTAL SCURVY

Abstract

Since Lanman and Ingalls¹demonstrated that vitamin C deficiency led to poor healing of experimental surgical wounds in guinea pigs and after operations on children there has been an increasing recognition by other surgeons (Wolfer²and Holman³) as well as by Lanman that this factor may be of importance in surgical operations on adults. Since vitamin C was isolated by Svirbely and Szent-Györgyi⁴and synthesized by Reichstein and his co-workers⁵there have been many tests for vitamin C developed for the determination of its content in foods, tissues, urine and blood. It is now realized that certain of the older methods of analysis did not give accurate results, but it is hoped that present methods will be of value within certain rather broad limits. At the time this study was begun two and one-half years ago little was known concerning the vitamin C status of