Medicine: Spinster Scurvy

“There is a sort of relativity about food rations,” observed Britain’s Lancet in a recent issue. “Two people get double the rations of one, but the food goes further. Three people fare better and can have a weekly joint. . . . But the person who lives by herself (it is generally a she) has to depend on herself for everything.”

Dr. Albert Forster of Seaham, county of Durham, had prompted these observations by a letter to the Lancet on the mild nutritional disease common in Britain’s “one-ration-book households.” Women living alone often do not get enough meat and fruit, fail to eat raw vegetables. Many would rather just have a meal of tea, bread and margarine than bother with vegetables at all.