designation vitamin. At least two "determinants" are thought to be concerned in the nutrition of growth, a fat-soluble and a water-soluble substance.[117] _Pellagra_ is one of the diseases attributed to an unbalanced diet,[118] and it has been suggested that the increased use of highly milled maize and wheat flour from which vitamins are absent may be responsible for the extension of this malady in recent years. Other observers, while admitting that a faulty diet may predispose to pellagra as to tuberculosis and other diseases, do not assent to the view that it is the primary factor.[119] _Lathyrism._--The name lathyrism has been given to a disease supposed to be connected with the use of the pulse and the chick pea. Nervous symptoms are conspicuous and sometimes severe, although the affection is of a milder type than pellagra. The disease is said to be associated with the exclusive or almost exclusive use of leguminous food and with generally miserable conditions of living. It is yet uncertain whether lathyrism is a deficiency disease like beriberi and possibly pellagra, or whether it is due to a mixture of foreign and poisonous seeds with the particular legumes consumed, or whether under certain conditions the legumes themselves may contain poisonous substances generated by some unknown fungus growths. _Favism_ (from _fava_, "bean") is an acute febrile anemia with jaundice and hemoglobinuria which occurs in Italy and has been attributed to the use of beans as food or even to smelling the blossom of the bean plant.[120] A marked individual predisposition to the malady is said to exist. Although the symptoms are very severe and seem to point to an acute poisoning, no toxic substance has been isolated from the implicated beans. It has been suggested by some that bacterial infection, and by others that a fungous growth on the bean, is responsible, but no evidence has been brought forward to support either assumption. _Scurvy_ in some forms is undoubtedly connected with the lack of certain necessary components of a normal diet. The development of scurvy on shipboard in the absence of fresh milk, fresh vegetables, fruit juice, and the like is a fact long familiar. Guinea-pigs fed on milk, raw and heated, and on milk and grain have developed typical symptoms of scurvy.[121] On the other hand, a form of experimental scurvy has been produced in guinea-pigs and rabbits kept on an ordinary diet of green vegetables, hay, and oats by the intravenous injection of certain streptococci.[122] The relative share of diet and infection in the production of human scurvy is consequently regarded by some investigators as uncertain.