Avitaminosen und Nährschäden

A diet is described, which leads to a progressive, highly selective, and ultimately fatal dystrophy of the voluntary muscles. Guinea pigs and rabbits are susceptible, rats resistant. The diet used is complete in known requirements, except for vitamin E; the addition of this factor, however, does not prevent the development of the disease. The lesions are not due to inanition, infection, or scurvy, and must be referred to some still unknown factor.

Whatever may be the nature of the nutritive error or deficiency which in chicks is responsible for encephalomalacia, the immediate cause must be looked for in some agent or condition which impairs the capillary circulation of the brain. The essential lesion is an ischemic necrosis, followed, if the animal survive, by reparative organization of the dead tissue.

The nutritional muscle dystrophy of guinea pigs and rabbits is primarily a degeneration of the muscle fibers and is not associated with visible alterations of the peripheral nerves or their motor terminals.