Carrots Are Not Enough

The idea that "night blindness" is caused only by lack of vitamin A, and can be cured by eating carrots, is stylish but false according to a group of scientists in Edinburgh. They declare that most night blindness among soldiers is psychological.

In the last two issues of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Erich Wittkower, Psychologist Thomas Ferguson Rodger and collaborators have set down the results of their investigations of this wartime ailment.

Dr. Wittkower and Major Rodger picked at random 52 soldiers who were helpless in the dark; some of them had proved it by wrecking cars. "Most of the men," said the investigators, "ate the ordinary Army food and therefore had plenty of vitamins in their diet." Thorough eye examinations were given to 42 of the men; only one had a physical eye defect that caused his night blindness.

But psychiatric examinations showed that the soldiers were "psychologically abnormal far beyond the range of individual differences in the average population." They fell into three groups: 1) the "Mummy's darling" type; 2) the "Tigers and Champs" (really mothers' boys at heart but trying to compensate by acting tough); 3) those who wavered between the two extremes. Most of the men had always been afraid of the dark. A few had fought bravely, had become night-blind after terrible battle experiences. Sample case:

A puny soldier of 25, whose father had been a "strong man" and wrestled with a Russian bear and whose mother had pampered him. He fought in France, did bravely in Norway until he was blown into a cellar; then he developed night blindness. His ambition: to descend in a parachute in the center of Berlin and wreck buildings. If Britain should be invaded, he plans to kill his whole family, including his stepfather, "to prevent them from being raped."

Mindful of the 1,000,000 diabetics in the U.S., Congress voted that all insulin be checked by the Pure Food & Drug Administration for strength and purity. Reason: Last week the patent of the University of Toronto (where insulin was discovered) expired, and the University lost its exclusive right to oversee the production of insulin, which it has done without profit for nearly 20 years.

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