stefansson-wrangel-09-40-011-001

Scurvy

Aug 24

Volume 78
Number 25 CURRENT COMMENT 1967

MEAT AND SCURVY

The fact that scurvy is not peculiarly prevalent
among the peoples of the Far North living for the most
part on animal food, who rarely have available those
vegetable products which are prized as antiscorbutics,
has been the subject of considerable discussion since the
recent renewal of interest in a long known disease.
Those investigators who have tested the protective

power of meat against scurvy on the classic experi-
mental animal, the guinea-pig, have almost without
exception failed to demonstrate any antiscorbutic
potency in muscle tissue. Against these findings stand
the statements of Stefánsson 1 that scurvy was avoided
during his arctic explorations by the use of large quan-
tities of meat from freshly killed game, the tissue
usually being eaten raw. The experimental investiga-
tions of Vedder 2 of the U. S. Army at Fort Sam
Houston, Texas, corroborate the previous guinea-pig
tests in showing that the administration of considerable
amounts of erythrocytes, voluntary muscle, heart mus-
cle and bone all failed to prevent the development of
scurvy, or even to prolong the depletion period. The
antiscorbutic factor is not present in these tissues in
appreciable quantity. On the other hand, various
viscera—the liver, lungs, spleen and pancreas—as well
as the brain evidently possess antiscorbutic powers, as
has long been known for the liver in particular. This
demonstration in respect to glandular organs may
account for native customs among tribes who live
chiefly on a meat diet. Many of them esteem the
organs as dietary tidbits. Vedder states that when the
plains Indian had been without game over a consider-
able period, he was accustomed to open the freshly killed
bison and eat handfuls of raw liver. It is stated that
the Eskimos make a special effort to secure the liver
of the seal, and that when hunters had Apache Indians
as guides, the usual bargain was for the guides to take
all the insides of the deer, leaving the meat for the
hunters. Perhaps the seemingly unusual customs
become susceptible of a plausible explanation in the
light of the newer knowledge of nutrition. Perhaps,
further, the distinction between meat, in the sense of
muscular tissues, and glandular organs such as the
liver and kidney, has not always been made by those
who have reported dietary habits in relation to human
scurvy.
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1. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur: Original Observations on Scurvy, M. Rev.
of Rev. 24: 257, 1918; Observations on Three Cases of Scurvy, J. A.
M. A. 71: 1715 (Nov. 23) 1918.

2. Vedder, E. B.: The Etiology of Scurvy, IV, Observations Con-
cerning the Physiologic Action of the Antiscorbutic Vitaliment Mil.
Surgeon 50:534 (May) 1922.

You may have seen this already. Did you
Experience with Knight include the feeding
of viscera? - Hanes.

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