stefansson-wrangel-09-40-009-001



April 30th, 1920.

Dear Mr. Givens:

My attention has recently been called to your interesting
letter published in "Science" for March 12th, 1920, relative to the
antiscorbutic property of dehydrated meat. I should be greatly inter-
ested to keep in touch with you in your investigation on this and
similar subjects and you may count on me for any information that I
can give you.

I have just returned from London where I had some very
interesting talks on this subject with Dr. Martin, the director of
the Lister Institute for Preventive Medicine, who, as you know, is
one of the leading authorities on scurvy in Great Britian.

Some of the points that interested me in your letter but
are not quite clear are the following:

In the first paragraph you refer to "whole milk" as if it
had no antiscorbutic properties. What kind of whole milk do you mean?
Is it fresh milk that has never been heated or is it some commericial
product, possibly powdered? I have always supposed that fresh milk
had a good deal of antiscorbutic value and that this was equal or
greater if the milk were sour.

Farther down in the same paragraph you speak of certain de-
hydrated products, saying they "retain some of their original content
of antiscorbutic vitamine." What interests me here and what seems to
me not to be sufficiently dwelt on in most investigations is just how
long do they retain these antiscorbutic properties. I find that some
investigations of both dessicated and tinned products. In other
cases experiments have been made on perfectly fresh products specially
put up in the laboratory under the supervision of the investigator
himself, and he has later on announced conclusions applying to caanned
preparations of the vegetable in question as obtainable in the market.
It seems to me that least open to question whether demonstrating some
antiscorbutic power in tomatoes which you have yourself canned is very
significant when applied to the commercial product, which when pur-
chased of a ship's outfitter, for instance, may easily be half a dozen
years old.

Of course, I have nothing to say against the scientific