THE INFLUENCE OF NUTRITION UPON RESISTANCE TO INFECTION

The possibility that diet may have some influence upon the incidence, course, and final outcome of infection, is a comparatively recent idea. Since 1900 the idea has gained ground, and quite a body of work has I appeared in the literature. The task of reviewing it is not easy for several reasons: in many cases the results are contradictory, in others they may be difficult of interpretaCon because of many variables. At best the literature is a scattered one. In considering t,he actual infec-tion, the author has confined himself to infections of bacterial origin, and has not included, for lack of space, much excellent and suggestive work on infections of protozoan and metazoan origin. In general one may say that the work in this field is in its infancy, but that there is much suggestive work that meritIs further study. Vitamin B cowbplex. Pet(ragnani (1921) claimed that pigeons, fed on polished rice, lose their immunity, both natural and acquired, to ant’hrax, even before symptoms of polyneuritis develop. Corda (1923) believes that this loss of immunity may not be due to deficiency of vitamin B, but may in part be ascribed to underfeeding. Healthy adult pigeons, starved four days, or fed only 10 grams fresh ssparagus tips for four days, die within two days after receiving injections of anthrax cultures-i.e., as promptly as do pigeons with polyneuritis. No attention was given to the temperature of the afnimals, although Pasteur had clearly shown that chilling abolishes t’he natural resistance of the chicken to anthrax. G. M. Finlay (1923) was able to show that normal animals, whose body temperature is lowered by pyramidon, or in the course of vit)amin B deficiency, invariably die if inoculated with pneumococcus, B. coli, or B. enteri tidis; whereas t,hey nearly alwa,ys survive these infec