EXPERIMENTAL VITAMIN (A, B1, B2 and B COMPLEX) DEFICIENCY

Abstract

After treating many patients suffering from the nervous complications of pernicious anemia with large doses of liver (vitamin A) over a long period and neither effecting improvement in the degenerations of the central nervous system nor preventing their onset,¹ we became skeptical of the effect of vitamin deficiency on the tissue of the central nervous system. Since both vitamin A and vitamin B depletion had been held responsible for degeneration of the central nervous system by various workers, we decided to reinvestigate the problem. The discovery of a pellagra-preventing substance, vitamin B₂ or G, suggested to some workers that pernicious anemia, or possibly at least its neurologic manifestations, might be due to chronic vitamin deficiency. Koessler and Maurer thought that anemia in rats could be produced by depletion of vitamin A. Schaumann,² Hofmeister³ and Woollard⁴ produced paralysis of the extremities in rats depleted of vitamin