As is well known, the besieged in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War in the winter of 1870-71 suffered severely from scurvy. The accounts of their pitiable condition have been portrayed for us by numerous French writers (Delpech, Hayem, Lasèque and Legroux). The people lived mainly on rice and bread, with an occasional addition of potatoes or horse meat. The winter was exceptionally severe, which was supposed to have intensified the scorbutic condition. Not only were the inmates of the prisons on the Seine attacked, numbering about one thousand, but even the patients in the military hospitals developed the disease. It is of interest to remember that the siege lasted but little over four months, from September 17th to January 27th, the date of the armistice. In the Russo-Japanese War, after the siege of Port Arthur, it was found that one-half of the garrison of 17,000 men had scurvy. Although there are certain parts of the world where scurvy is of frequent occurrence, no country has been entirely free from it. As might be expected, it has been particularly prevalent in the North, where vegetation is scanty--in Greenland, Alaska, Russia and the Baltic States. It has likewise prevailed in the tropics when the crops have failed. India has been conspicuous for its large number of epidemics; some years ago scurvy occurred in Arabia among the English troops stationed at Aden, both among the British and the native troops. A recent communication from Aruba, a small island of Dutch Guiana, lying north of Venezuela, illustrates how devastating scurvy still is in some parts of the world. This account tells of 3000 cases of this disease which occurred in 1915 among a population of less than 10,000, owing to the fact that the crops had failed almost entirely during the years 1912, 1913 and 1914. It is important for us to realize that we are still dependent on the annual crops for our protection from scurvy; in other words, the world is leading a hand-to-mouth existence in regard to its quota of antiscorbutic food. The truth of this condition has been realized for Ireland, sadly illustrated by numerous epidemics, notably the great epidemic of 1847 reported by Curran. It was demonstrated by the outbreaks of scurvy in Norway in 1904 and 1912, and was brought to the attention of many in the United States in the spring of 1916. In this year our potato crop fell far below the normal, with the result that scurvy appeared in various parts of the United States, especially in institutions (Fig. 1). [Illustration: Fig. 1.--A comparison between the requisitioned quantity (in thousand pound units) of potatoes and other vegetables, and the quantity received per month by an institution in which more than 200 cases of scurvy occurred at the beginning of April, 1916. The total height of column represents the amount needed and requisitioned; the solid black portion the amount received. The number of inmates in the institution remained approximately the same.