The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-12
Deficiency Diseases
By R. ADDlNGToN BRUCE

Children and adults alike, modern science has established, are subject to certain dis eases due directly to deficiency in the sys- tenn of this or that substance essential to health. And usually the deficiency results from faulty dieting.
 The exceptions are some diseases--notably diabetes and cretinism--wherein the defi- cieney is of a substance secreted by one of the endocrine glands. Here the requirement for effective treatment is administration, in suitable amounts, of one or another glandular extract to compensate for the particular de- ficiency.
 In all other deficiency diseases, treatment -and prevention, too-calls for inclusion in the diet of a foodstuff containing the sub stance the system lacks.
 Thus, children or older persons who do not eat sufficient iron-containing foods are liable to suffer from anemia. If the diet is deficient in lime various diseases of the bones may result, and especially disease of the teeth.
 Recent investigators. in fact, emphasize the part played by dietary errors in causing dental decay. They note that races whose diet includes an abundance of milk, fruits, green vegetables, and whole cereals--foods rich in lime and also in vitamins-p possess teeth exceptionally resistive to decay. Ex- perimentally also they have demonstrated the importance of lime in dental health.
 To lime deficiency-4though some say 1t is rather to vitamin deficiency--is likewise at tributed the common. disease of childhood known as Tickets Certainly q diet of both lime content and vitamin content counts for much in the prevention and treatment of rickets, particularly If supplemented by sun. light. F And so far as vitamin deficiency is coD- cerned, some most serious diseases-including scufvy and beri-beri--are unquestiOnably re sultant from it. To prevent scurvy it is only necessary to include in the diet oranges or other fresh fruit, or a vegetable such as to- matoes. Beri-beri may be both prevented and cured by substituting whole rice for the polished rice to which it has been traced.
 Pellagra is still another deficiency disease. attacking only those who depend overmuch on cereals for their sustenance and. eat no meat or next to none. Here, though, 1t seems to be a question, not so much of the absence of any one essential food element as of con tinued failure to vary the diet adequately.
 Finally, the suggestion has recently been advanced that the nervous disorders so la- mentally in evidence today may, to some ex- tent at least, be deficiency diseases. The nervous, it is theOrized, are persons who have drawn unduly on the bodys store of phos- phorus and fats.
 MlSe pnySlcAanSS Aor thdI maCter' nave long made it a rule to prescribe upbuilding foods for nervous patients whose appearance suggests under-nutrition. It is the expert ence of these physicians that in proportion as the patients gain in weight their nervous symptoms tend to abate. 4
 All of which, it need hardly be added, goes to stress the importance of varied diet From childhood up, the effort should be to resist any food prejuice or predilections that may cause any restricting of the diet to linn tied range of foods.