The inborn factors in disease : an essay / by Archibald E. Garrod.

  • Garrod, Archibald E. (Archibald Edward), Sir, 1857-1936.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The inborn factors in disease : an essay / by Archibald E. Garrod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HEALTH AND DISEASE 33 supplies from without must experience serious troubles if any of those supplies are withheld; as witness the phenomena of anoxaemia, culminating in suffocation, and those of starvation of various degrees; but in the diseases under discussion the dietetic errors are much more subtle. The vitamins, which might be described as exogenous hormones, cannot be reckoned as foodstuffs, but exert a profound influence over nutrition. The vitamin C, which is soluble in water, is con¬ tained in foods which avert or cure scurvy; and when it is lacking the tissues are rendered unduly vulnerable to slight injuries, and injuries, slight or severe, play the chief parts in determining the occurrence and distribu¬ tion of haemorrhages in scorbutic subjects. In the same way the fat-soluble vitamin D is concerned with bone and tooth formation, and lack of it induces rickets ; but as is now known, the organism is not wholly dependent * upon supplies of that vitamin from without ; for it can be formed from ergosterol in the skin, by irradiation with light or ultra violet rays. As to the influence of personal factors in deficiency diseases, clinical evidence, and especially that derived from work in children's hospitals, suggests strongly that some individuals are much better able than others to carry on despite shortages of vitamins. That some infants develop scurvy upon diets which others can take with impunity, or even upon a diet which appears hardly open to criticism, is a matter of 3482 -p