Goldberger,1 from his experimental studies on normal men and children, has obtained strong presumptive evidence that pellagra is a dietary deficiency disease. The more recent work of Jobling and Arnold2 seems to indicate that infection with an organism belonging to the Aspergillus group plays an important part in the etiology. Our uniform success in the treatment of pellagra with a diet which approximates a pure protein diet favors Goldberger's theory and yet does not contradict the idea of an infection with the Aspergillus group of organisms, as such a diet may change the "culture medium" in the intestinal canal, making this habitat unfavorable for the growth of organisms of this group.
The diet used in our cases is that proposed by Engman, and the entire method of treatment will be discussed in detail in a subsequent communication in this series. Suffice it here to say that the patient