18 THE VITAMINES 



All these factors must be taken into account when commenting upon 

 the pathological conditions which are of exceptional interest to us. 

 These are chiefly the conditions which give us an insight into the 

 causes, which are so difficult to determine in hunger edema and 

 pellagra. Even a well informed physician may easily be led astray. 

 He questions his patients about their diet, whereupon they enumerate 

 a long list of foodstuffs, from which apparently nothing has been 

 omitted. Immediately, his attention will be directed to obvious 

 things, such as mode of living, nature of work performed, and method 

 of preparing and cooking the food everything which may be etio- 

 logically important and may help him solve his problem. 



Despite the fact that a number of ideas originated by us are 

 credited to others, it is a source of pleasure to witness the great 

 progress that has been made in vitamine research. In our opinion, 

 the name "Vitamine", proposed by us in 1912, contributed in no 

 small measure to the dissemination of these ideas. The word, 

 "Vitamine", served as a catch word which meant something even to the 

 uninitiated, and it was not by mere accident that just at that time, 

 research developed so markedly in this direction. 



Our view as to the fortunate choice of this name is strengthened, on 

 the one hand, because it has become popular (and a badly chosen 

 catchword, like a folksong without feeling, can never become pop- 

 ular), and on the other, because of the untiring efforts of other workers 

 to introduce a varied nomenclature, for example, "accessory food 

 factors, food hormones, water-soluble B and fat-soluble A, nutramine, 

 and auximone" (for plants). Some of these designations are cer- 

 tainly not better, while others are much worse than "Vitamine." 



