Abstract
We pointed out some time ago that the diets used to produce rickets in animals have an appreciable excess of base over acid and that rickets is not produced if such diets are made more acid. We also noted that the hydrogen ion concentration of infants' stomach contents is lower than that of adults, and that a further depression may appreciably decrease the amount of soluble calcium and phosphoric acid available for absorption. In looking for a possibility of explaining the action of cod liver oil in rickets, we studied its effect on the reaction of the intestinal contents. The feces of rats on the rickets producing diet No. 84, used in this laboratory, when made into a suspension with water, give a pH of 7.4 to 8.0 with an average of about 7.6. When such rats are given the active principle of cod liver oil which we have described or cod liver oil itself, the reaction of the feces changes in a few days to the acid side, usually to about pH 6.2 or even as far as pH 5.7. Controls with cotton seed oil give an unchanged alkaline reaction of the feces.
When a solution of the active principle in olive oil or in glycerol is injected into rachitic rats subcutaneously, it does not produce healing or change the pH value of the feces, provided measures are taken to prevent the licking of the site of injection. (We apply a drop of collodion with a little picric acid dissolved in it.) We thus have additional evidence that the action of the active principle is in the gastro-intestinal tract. Orr et al. 1 on the basis of metabolism experiments on infants have also taken the viewpoint that the primary disturbance in rickets is in the gastro-intestinal tract.
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