1917] The Ottawa Naturalist. Ill 



NOTES BY "DIGRESSOR." 



Recent experiments by British investigators go to show that 

 butter and some forms of oleomargarine contain a substance that pro- 

 motes growth in the young. Young rats fed on a ration from which 

 all butter and its substitutes had been eliminated, continued to live 

 but did not increase in weight; while adult females fed on the same 

 food failed to produce young. This growth-promoting substance is 

 found in oleomargarine made from beef fats, but is absent from the 

 other butter substitutes manufactured, as many of them are, from other 

 animal fats or vegetable oils. 



The conclusion drawn from these facts by an English writer is 

 that while the presence of this substance in food is probably of little 

 importance to adults whose growth is completed, it may have much to 

 do with the health and robustness of children. Plenty of butter in 

 their diet, he says, is indicated. But as the substance is known to exist 

 in eggs and some other comestibles, it seems likely that the ordinary 

 mixed diet long recognised as the most wholesome, will, even in the 

 absence of butter or beef-fat margarine, supply all the needful con- 

 stituents for growth and health. 



This growth-promoting substance seems to belong to a class of food 

 elements, the very existence of which was scarcely suspected until quite 

 recently. Dietetists used to prescribe certain proportions of proteids, 

 carbohydrates and fats producing so many calories, and they told us 

 that if we did not thrive on these, it was our own fault. But it is now 

 recognized that these methods of food valuation were far too coarse. 

 Besides largely ignoring the sapidity of food, which has a great deal 

 to do with digestion and consequently with nutrition, they knew 

 nothing whatever of the astonishing influence of the "vitamines," the 

 first of which was discovered a few years ago in connection with the 

 study of the fatal oriental disease, beri-beri. 



Beri-beri, which has been known in China and the East for 

 hundreds of years, is a distressing disease with a mortality as high as 

 50 per cent. It was formerly attributed to all sorts of causes, such as 

 damp situations, lack of ventilation, decayed food, and fungoid 

 growths on grain. But it was finally traced to an exclusive diet of 

 "polished" rice, that is damaged rice which, in order to improve its 

 appearance, has been put through a process that removes its outer 

 coating, and a rapid cure was effected by the use of unpolished rice, 

 or by the addition of the polishings of the treated rice. From this it 

 was evident that the disease was due to the lack of something removed 

 in the polishing process, and eventually the all-essential substance was 

 isolated from the outer layers of the rice grain, and named "vitamine." 



