Deficiency disease in P.O.W., Royal Naval Hospital, Sydney.

This film shows symptomatology and treatment of deficiency disease in internees and prisoners of war from Hong Kong and Singapore interned by the Japanese between 1941 and 1945. There is a sound narrative as well as rolling intertitles. The clinical features shown include optic atrophy and corneal scarring, foot-rot, loss of proprioceptor sensation and knee reflexes, ataxic and hysterical gaits, unilateral anaesthesias (a man is pricked many times on his legs and feels nothing) and paraesthesias, muscle wasting and "nerve-deafness". The patients perform some physiotherapy as a group. It is noted that the patients are treated with vitamin therapy. Unfortunately many of the neurological changes have proved to be permanent.