Infantile Scurvy: The Blood, the Blood-Vessels and the Diet

The following study considers infantile scurvy from a point of view which is somewhat unusual. Although it includes a chapter on diet, it is nevertheless chiefly concerned with scurvy as a hemorrhagic disease. This phase of the subject seemed worthy of investigation, as hemorrhage is the typical clinical symptom of scurvy, whether it manifests itself in bleeding into the gums, or as the equally well-recognized subperiosteal hemorrhages of the long bones. Indeed, some authors follow Barlow in considering infantile scurvy under the group of the hemorrhagic diseases, believing the hemorrhages to be the primary disturbance. There has been, however, as far as we know, no study of the blood in this disease, if we except some estimations, scattered through the literature, of the hemoglobin or of the blood-cells. We have devoted our attention especially to the question of the coagulability of the blood, with the object of ascertaining whether there