Newer Clinical Aspects of Vitamin Deficiency Diseases

In this ever changing world, shifts in the relative incidence and importance of different kinds of disease are matters of absorb ing interest and practical concern. From these shifts there may arise new concepts of disease, new avenues of research, new light on old problems, sometimes they cause profound changes in the lives of millions of people. It is not unreasonable to include in this category the rise of the vitamin deficiencies to the place they occupy in medicine today. Beginning, in the modern sense, as an explanation for the occurrence of an obscure disease, beri-beri, affecting mainly the dense populations of far Eastern lands, the concept has broadened to establish an entirely new kind of disease composed of many individual representatives. From it has come a new concept of nutrition, new knowledge of vital biochemical processes, new fields of research, new substances and a new literature. It has affected commerce and industry and changed the habits and customs, lives and living of untold num bers of people. Progress in this field has been exceedingly rapid and the pace is accelerating yet many problems of immediate importance to human health press for solution. For example, the problems of the interrelationships of the vitamins and the optimum amounts of these substances under ideal conditions of health have barely been touched.