Walter Hollis Eddy

“ Recently Auguste Lumiere in Paris has put forth the view that polyneuritis is not merely a vitamine deficiency disease but a nutriment deficiency disease. He reports that he fed birds on a starvation diet, but with plenty of vitamine "B". These birds developed polyneuritis and were cured by adding to the diet plenty of polished rice. The view he wishes us to take is that all factors must be present and that the absence of the nutriment is as important as the absence of the vitamine. ”

“ It was timely in this respect for one of Osborne and Mendel's discoveries was that no matter how efficient the mixture in all the requirements then known to the nutrition expert, the rats failed to grow unless there was added to the diet a factor which they found in milk. In searching for this factor they made a still further discovery for on fractioning the milk they soon learned that the unknown factor was distributed in two different parts of the milk, namely in the butter fat and in the protein free and fat-free whey. The absence of either milk fraction was sufficient to prevent growth. ”

“ Hess, Dutcher, Hart and Steenbock and others have adduced sufficient evidence to show that the vitamine content of the milk of a cow is largely determined by the cow's food and as a consequence the milk may be very poor in vitamine. It is obvious then that the failure of the milk to cure beri-beri in a given case might be due to this cause and not to lack of identity of the curative with the growth factor. Osborne and Mendel have also shown that milk in general must not be classed among the rich sources of the vitamine, even when the cow's food is rich in vitamine. ”

“ One of the earliest difficulties encountered in the study of the "A" vitamine was the failure of fat solvents to extract the material from its richest vegetable sources. If butter or egg yolk is extracted with ether, the fat obtained is rich in the "A" vitamine. If, however, ether-extraction is applied to green leaves or seeds it removes the oils but these oils contain little or no vitamine. Pressing methods also fail to remove the substance from vegetable sources. For example, if we press or extract cotton seed we obtain the oil but the vitamine is retained in the press cake. ”

“ But calories are not the only necessities. A pound of pure fat will yield all the calories a soldier needs in a day but his language and morals wouldn't stand the strain of such a diet. Neither would his health, for not only does his body demand fuel but also that it be of a special kind. While there are many kinds of foodstuffs, chemical analysis shows that they are mainly combinations of pure compounds of relatively few varieties. The chemists call these proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and salts. Meats, eggs, the curd of milk, etc., are the principal sources of protein. ”

“ There has grown up in this country a great regard for prepared milk substitutes in infant feeding and a wide usage of condensed milks, reinforced milks, diluted milk formulae, etc. All such preparations must be examined anew in the light of the vitamine discoveries and unless the given preparation can show a clean bill of health in vitamine content, it should be either discarded or properly supplemented.
As children grow up, it is fortunate that in their wider choice of dietaries the danger of vitamine deficiency decreases. But even in childhood it is unsafe to rely too much on chance. ”

“ Let us assume that 5 per cent of butter fat in a given diet is sufficient to supply the "A" necessary for normal growth. Assume that the addition of 5 grams of the unknown in 100 grams of the butter-free diet fails to produce normal growth but that by adding 2 per cent of butter fat normal growth is reached. It is obvious under these conditions that 5 grams of the unknown is equivalent in "A" vitamine content to 5 minus 2 grams of butter fat, i.e., is equivalent to 3 grams of butter fat or expressed in per cents the substance contains 0.6 or 60 per cent of the "A" found in pure butter fat. ”

“ Our own experiments at present make us still firm in our belief that one of the factors and perhaps the most important factor in the stimulation effect is the vitamine but until we can devise a basal medium that is comparable to that used in rat feeding experiments, i.e., one that contains all the elements for optimum growth of yeasts except vitamine "B" it will be unsafe to draw conclusions from the test as to vitamine content. ”

“ By reducing the amount tested so that it was just adequate for normal growth and then applying the soda-cooking experimentation they showed that this method of cookery does do serious harm to the vitamine. From the practical point of view it is of course sufficient to show that enough is left after a cooking process to suffice for normal growth when the substance is taken in the portion sizes ordinarily eaten. The effect of alkali deserves more attention on the part of cooks and food preparateurs and we need more data concerning the minimal dose necessary to protect the human animal. ”

“ And the principal protein retained lacks one of the greatest essentials for growth while the vitamines have all been practically eliminated with the grain germ. Intelligence tells us then that if, having formed the habit, we will persist in our appetite for white flour we must see to it that the protein deficiency of the latter and its lack of vitamines is compensated for by supplementing the diet with the food-stuffs in which these are rich. ”

“ Osborne and Mendel raise another point of methodology and believe that more accurate results will be obtained if the source of the vitamine is fed separately than if mixed with the basal diet. It is easily possible that since one of the effects of lack of vitamine, especially of the "B" type, is poor appetite, the amount necessary to produce normal growth may be smaller than would appear from results obtained by mixing it in the basal diet. ”

“ Fortunately for the layman he has in the scales a good indicator of the normal progress of his child and so long as growth is normal he can fairly assume that the diet is adequate but if the scales say otherwise it is time for him to seek advice and then he is wise who insures that his medical adviser knows the newer aspects of nutrition. The parent can do this only by proper selection, but with a little knowledge he can soon satisfy himself as to whether his pediatrist is the right sort and it is one of the purposes of this text to bring home to the layman his responsibility in this matter. ”

“ When we come to the methods of testing for the "C" type it is necessary to change our animal. Rats do not have scurvy but guinea pigs do. The philosophy of the tests for the antiscorbutic vitamines then will be identical with that of the polyneuritic methods with pigeons, viz., preventive and curative tests with guinea pigs. The "C" vitamine is especially sensitive to heat and this fact enables us to secure a "C" vitamine-free diet. ”

“ In 1897 a Dutch chemist, Eijkman, had succeeded in producing in fowls a similar set of symptoms by feeding them with polished rice alone. This set of symptoms he called polyneuritis and this term is now commonly used to signify a beri-beri in experimental animals. Eijkman found that two or three weeks feeding sufficed to produce these symptoms and it was he who first showed that the addition of the rice polishings to the diet was sufficient to relieve the symptoms. Eijkman first thought that the cortical material contained something necessary to neutralize the effects of a diet rich in starch. ”

“ It was well known that in rats and man the intestinal flora can be changed from a putrefactive form to a non-putrefactive type by feeding milk sugar or lactose. If this were true, as was admitted by all, and the scurvy due to the absorption of putrefactive products, this absorption might still be the causal factor whether constipation was present or absent. To determine this point he fed his guinea pigs on oatmeal to which he added a carbohydrate diet. When the carbohydrate was lactose he was able to cure and prevent scurvy. ”

“ Whether it is necessary to use yeast cakes or any other concentrate of vitamine, depends entirely upon whether the ordinary diet is lacking in these factors and my first advice in the matter would be to make if possible a selection of the vitamine containing foods and see if normal conditions did not result before utilizing foods whose taste is not pleasing or which are taken as medicine. For it is an old experience that medicines will be taken only so long as the patient is sick and perhaps it is just as well so. ”

“ When a chemist is presented with a solution and asked to determine the presence or absence of lead in that solution he knows what he is seeking, what its properties are and how to proceed to not only determine its presence but to measure exactly the amount present. No such possibility is present in a test for vitamines, but this lack of knowledge as to the vitamine structure has not left us helpless. ”

“ In other words milk is merely a mobilization of the vitamines eaten and if the diet is to yield vitamine-rich milk it must itself be rich in these factors. Many a cow produces milk low in vitamine content and the same is true of nursing mothers. There are many "old wives" prejudices in regard to what food a lactating mother may eat and unfortunately many of these prejudices are extremely injurious and false. One of them is the prejudice against green vegetables. ”

“ The net result has been to discover that Nature is often a better chemist than man and has a much better knowledge of what man needs in his diet than the chemist. The chemist employed by the manufacturer has, as a result, gone to such a limit in his development of purification methods as to often eliminate the essential nutrients and the result has been foods that will stand analysis for pure nutrients, but which will not stand Nature's analysis for dietary efficiency. ”

“ The use of salads is looked upon by many sections as a foreign affectation and too little attention is paid to the value of eggs, milk and cheese. Enough has been said already to show that these latter articles have much more than an esthetic value and one of the missions of the nutrition expert must be to show the people why dairy products and salads must become features in the every-day meals of the every-day people. And even if the salads are still unappreciated, it is necessary that cooked green vegetables occupy more of a position in the menu than is too often the case. ”

“ It may be possible to so treat our extracts as to eliminate from them all other stimuli except the vitamine or to destroy the vitamine in them and thus permit the comparison of an extract with the vitamine destroyed against one in which it is present and thus arrive at the result desired. At any rate all we can say at present is that the yeast test is unreliable as a measure of vitamine content but that if it can be made quantitative its advantages are so great that it is very much worth while to continue work upon it until it is certain that it cannot be made to produce the desired result. ”

“ That the binding is not difficult to break is shown by the fact that when vegetables are eaten as a source of vitamine the body is able to separate the complex. It is further evident that the body does separate this complex and stores it in animal fat from the experiments with cow feeds and feeding. Milk for example is rich or poor in vitamine according to the supply of the latter in the food given to the cow. ”

“ Most observers assume that the antineuritic vitamine discovered by Funk and the water-soluble "B" are identical. This view is based on the fact that when sources which yield the water-soluble "B" in rat feeding are tested for antineuritic power these sources are apparently parallel in antineuritic power and growth production. Furthermore rats deprived of the water-soluble "B" develop polyneuroses identical in symptoms with those shown by rats and pigeons when the latter are placed on a polished rice diet. ”

“ When so mixed the animals do not get enough to maintain appetite and really decline because they do not eat enough rather than because the amount of vitamine given is inadequate to growth. Details of this kind are matters however that particularly concern the experimentalist and as our purpose here is to merely describe the methodology we may perhaps turn now to other types of testing. Before doing so it is perhaps unnecessary to suggest that in all experiments it is important that the food intake consumed be measured. ”

“ The conception that pellagra is due to a dietary deficiency is, therefore, not contradicted by the available evidence. This does not imply that the disease is necessarily due to a deficiency of diet in a specific substance such as the hypothetical pellagra vitamine of Funk (1913) . It is much more likely that the pellagrous syndrome is caused by a combination of the deficiencies in some of the well recognized food factors.
V. OTHER AVITAMINOSES The rôle of the vitamine in the nutrition and growth of organisms other than the man is becoming a matter of interest in various ways. ”

“ If however the amount of the substance necessary to supply the vitamine required for normal development is large such addition would of course disturb the proportions of nutrients in the normal diet and in that case analysis must be made of the substance tested to determine its protein, fat, carbohydrate and salt content and the basal diet corrected from this viewpoint so as to retain the optimum proportions of these factors. McCollum's cereal testing combinations are illustrative of such methods applied to cereals. ”