The Scurvy of Guinea Pigs.*

Recently considerable experimental work has beeqdone on the effect of heat on vitamines, more particularly on the water-soluble vitamine. In. a recent article Denton and Kohman (1) come to the conclusion that “ordinary methods of cooking do not perceptibly injure the nutritive value of carrots.” These experiments were carried out on rats, which preclude a satisfactory consideration of experimental scurvy. In the following experiments guinea pigs weighing about 200 to 250 gm. were employed. As will be seen from Chart 1, it was found that in the course of cooking, carrots lose a very large part of their antiscorbutic potency; that whereas 35 gm. of carrots were able to protect a guinea pig from scurvy when added to its ration, the same amount of carrots which had been cooked for about 45 minutes had lost its potency in this respect. An attempt was made to prevent this loss by acidulating the water by the addition of vinegar. As will be noted from Chart 3, however, the animals came down with scurvy within the usual period. Further experiments demonstrated the fact that from a nutritional standpoint carrots cannot be looked upon as a uniform article of diet; that there is a marked difference in various lots of carrots and probably also of other vegetables, according to whether they are fresh and young, or are old. It was found, for example, that if, instead of employing the carrots which were ordinarily fed