Abstract
This work should have been performed on “healthy” infants fed by “healthy” mothers or “healthy” wet-nurses. As our materials were almost all sick babies, the relation between the shortest peroxidase stain-time and the blood platelet count might have presented itself only in a distorted form. This was at least our expectation at the start of the present work. But the result was quite beyond our expectation. The shortest peroxidase stain-time and the blood platelet count showed a close relation between themselves as signs of avi- .taminosis B, without being materially influenced by the different diseases our infants had.
1. A prolongation of the shortest peroxidase stain-time and a high blood platelet count indicated a state of avitaminosis B in infants.
2. 71 % of all the infant cases with a prolongation of the shortest peroxidase stain-time showed a platelet count higher than the normal, while the count was within normal limits in 83% of all the infants with the normal shortest peroxidase stain-time.
3. A rough parallelism was seen between the length of the prolongation in question and the increase of the platelet count.
4. The shortest peroxidase stain-time is prolonged and the platelet count is high in infants fed on Arakawa-negative milk.
5. Cases of infantile preberiberi and infantile beriberi were found most frequently among infants with a prolongation of the shortest peroxidase stain-time and with a high platelet count.
