Vitamin a Deficiency and Urolithiasis

Some years ago Osborne and Mendell drew attention to the frequency of calculi in the urinary tract of rats on a vitamin Adeficient diet. In 857 autopsies they found calculi 81 times. “In every instance,” they wrote, L’where calculi developed, the animals were without an adequate source of the fat-soluble vitamin for some time.” Mendel once more referred to this matter at a meeting of the Medical Society of the State of New York in March, 1920, in an address on the fat-soluble vitamin A. He said on that occasion, that Osborne and himself had observed additional cases and that the formation of phosphate calculi with vitamin A deficiency is still more frequent than would appear from their statistics.