Abstract
This thesis contains data collected during researches
carried out in India while on Army Service under wartime
conditions in 1944 -45, in Britain since 1946, and in the
United States during the period of tenure of a Rockefeller
Fellowship in 1948-49.
The work described here is partly clinical, but much of
it has been carried out in the laboratory. The investigations
have had to be planned according to the material and facilities
available at each centre and to be modified in the light of
rapid advances in knowledge. At the time of the studies on Indian troops, for example, folic acid had not been synthesised and cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) was unknown. The
laboratory then was a straw hut, the apparatus consisted
chiefly of a microscope, a centrifuge and a Sahli haemoglobinometer, and the questioning had to be carried out largely in
the Urdu language. The data collected then have been
included here, however, as they draw attention to an unexpected
problem of megaloblastic anaemia that gave rise to anxiety
because of the extent to which it affected Indian troops
fighting in the East in the Second World War. At the time
our knowledge was insufficient to enable a biochemical study
of the condition to be carried out and indeed much of this
thesis concerns the development of satisfactory techniques for
the study of these problems of 1942 -45.
