Some contributions to the study of the megaloblastic anaemias and other conditions associated with disordered metabolism of cyanocobalamin pteroyglutamic acid and related substances

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.