A Sensitive Test for Subclinical Scurvy in Man

Judged by clinical criteria, scurvy is uncommon in this country. An acquaintance with experimentally produced scurvy, however, indicates that various degrees of deficiency associated with a number of morbid changes can occur without classic symptoms or signs of the disease. My own observations have shown that histologic evidence of scurvy can frequently be found in the costochondral junctions of the ribs of animals which appear to be healthy, and that scorbutic lesions will occur in the incisors of guinea-pigs on experimental diets, unless they are given twice as much antiscorbutic vitamin as is necessary to prevent classic symptoms of the disease.1I have further shown that capillary fragility appears in young guinea-pigs within forty-eight hours after the inauguration of a scurvy-producing diet, that the fragility can be measured and expressed numerically, that it increases to a maximum during the course of the disease and that it promptly responds to