The effect of certain dietary deficiencies on the suprarenal glands

During recent years McCarrsion (1919a, b , and 1920) has published a series of important papers dealing with the effect of deficient diets on the various organs of the body. One very striking result which he has described was a great enlargement of the suprarenal glands, with pronounced increase in their content of adrenaline, in pigeons fed on published rice and suffering from the consequent polyneuritis. McCarrison’s experience led him to put forward the tentative suggestion, that the increase content of adrenaline might be significant of increased output of adrenaline during the development of the disease, and that this might account for the occurrence of œdema both in experimental polyneuritis produced in pigeons and in the wet form of human beri-beri. In certain later experiments on pigeons fed in polished rice with the addition of butter and onions, he found that the polyneuritis, which was quickly produced on this diet, was only rarely accompanied by œdema. There were several points in McCarrison’s suggestive observations which seemed worthy of further investigation. In the first place it was not clear whether the effect of an exclusive diet of polished rice on the adrenals of pigeons was due to specific deficiency of the accessary factors concerned with the development of polyneuritis, or to the more general deficiency of protein, fat or salts entailed by such a diet. In the second place, assuming the effect to be a specific one, and McCarrison right in suggesting a causal connection between excess of adrenaline and the appearance of œdema, corresponding to the wet from of ber-beri, it seemed that the investigation of this connection might lead to results of more general pathological importance. While the work was in progress McCarrison himself found reason to withdraw the suggestion, which he had put forward at an earlier stage, so that the position to which my own experiments have led me is in substantial agreement with that which McCarrison now holds. At the same time it seems worth while to put on record the experiments made on this aspect of the question.