Maintenance nutrition in the adult pigeon, and its relation to torulin (vitamin B1). I

OUR interest in this subject arose from the desire to meet possible objections to our original contention that a curative and protective vitamin B1 prepara- tion would not give maintenance nutrition [Kinnersley and Peters, 1925]. We found it impossible to effect this completely without a more elaborate investi- gation (of which this paper forms part) into the factors needed to give main- tenance nutrition in the normal pigeon. Accurate knowledge upon this is essential for the use of weight maintenance tests with pigeons in the assay of vitamin B1 and also for a study of the symptoms of avitaminosis. As pigeons upon a polished rice diet are suffering, in addition to deficiencies of protein and salts, from a deficiency of more than one B factor, the pathology of avian polyneuritis cannot be properly understood until single instead of multiple deficiencies can be experimentally produced [Peters, 1929, 1930]. We need not stress the wider consideration that a full knowledge of the necessary factors, as they present themselves in various animals, seems to be fundamental to the study of human beri-beri. In this paper, B1 and B2 have their accepted meaning. The term B3 is used for the pigeon factor [Williams and Waterman, 1928] and B4 for the rat factor [Reader, 1929].