Deficiency Diseases in the Caribbean The historiography of slavery in the Americas has recently taken on a new biological dimension as historians have begun to appreciate the importance of pathogenic agents in any holistic understanding of their subject. Of special interest is the impact of these agents on slave mortality and, more specifically, the extent of the role that they played in preventing most Caribbean slave populations from sustaining a natural rate of growth. Historians are also looking beyond pathogens to the nutritional factor, which may have figured prominently in the etiologies of slave diseases. Seldom does a new work appear which does not allege that malnutrition was a serious problem of Caribbean slave health. However, no attempt has been made to single out specific nutritional deficiencies in the Caribbean slave diet and in the process prove that Caribbean bondsmen were malnourished. Nor for that matter has any effort been made to link suspected nutritional deficiencies with some of the more important West Indian slave diseases.