The Nature of the Disease Due to the Exclu- Sive Diet of Oats in Guinea Pigs and Rabbits

The subject of the present paper was suggested by the investigations of Morgen and Beger,’ who fed rabbits on a diet composed wholly of oats. Their results coincided with those obtained by other authors2 who also were unable to keep these animals alive for more than a few months. To overcome this they added certain inorganic salts to the diet. Sodium chloride was found to stimulate the food intake, and calcium carbonate to prevent loss in weight, but these failed to decrease the mortality. They concluded that the disease which developed as the result of an exclusive diet of oats was due to acidosis, and tried to prove this by experiments with sodium bicarbonate. When this salt was added to the oats the animals remained in apparently good condition and with one exception lived for more than half a year, when the experiment was discontinued. Experiments similar to those described by Morgen and Beger have previously been reported. Lunin3 fed mice on a mixture of casein, fat, and sugar, and found that when sodium carbonate was added to neutralize the sulfuric acid formed from protein the mice lived longer. Weiser4 fed growing pigs on corn, and the chemical analysis of urine and feces showed a positive nitrogen, but a negative phosphorus and calcium balance. When calcium carbonate was added the latter balances became positive. As opposed to this, Schaumanns has found that rabbits are unable to liveon corn even upon the addition of calcium carbonate, but do well when dried yeast (5 per cent) is added. Laqueurb has shown the beneficial effect of sodium chloride in starving rabbits.