Studies in Experimental Cereal Food Poisoning: A Contribution to the Pathology and Etiology of Pellagra and Beri-Beri

Johnston, John M (1934) Studies in Experimental Cereal Food Poisoning: A Contribution to the Pathology and Etiology of Pellagra and Beri-Beri. MD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In all ages and in all countries where man has tilled the soil cereals have formed the main ingredient in the diet of the people and an important part of the food of domesticated animals. Although from the earliest times of civilisation they have been valued as foods, their consumption as a staple diet may be followed by serious poisonous effects, and two notable diseases, pellagra and beri-beri, have long been popularly associated with maize and rice respectively. During the present century the conception has arisen of wdietary deficiency diseases (the "Mangelkrankheiten" of German writers) which lays emphasis, not upon the positive presence of noxious material in the food consumed but upon the absence from the diet of certain essential constituents, commonly known as vitamins. The role of the vitamins is so widely accepted and so tacitly assumed, that the etiological relationship of their absence to pellagra and beri-beri is held by many authorities to be established. The investigations of Stockman (1917, 1929, 1931) into the poisonous principles of certain pulses directed attention to the question of the possible existence of toxic substances in cereals, and the present research, followed out in some detail in the case of maize and later embracing rice, wheat, rye, and oats, not only revealed the presence of poisons in these grains but reopened the etiology and pathology of pellagra and beri-beri from a new angle.

• Item Type: Thesis (MD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Medicine, Toxicology
• Date of Award: 1934
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1934-80030
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 03 Mar 2020 10:05
• Last Modified: 03 Mar 2020 10:05
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/80030