VITAMINES 249 



dependent upon vitamines in the food. Consider, for instance, 

 the transformation of carbohydrate into fat, which takes place 

 on such a large scale when animals for market are fed on 

 certain starchy foods. The starch and soluble carbohydrates in 

 all such foodstuffs are reduced to glucose in the alimentary 

 tracts of these animals ; and yet the food containing the largest 

 amount of assimilable carbohydrate is by no means necessarily 

 the most fattening. Something else is necessary to bring about 

 the change from glucose to fat — something which, it is not 

 unlikely, may prove to be a vitamine, present in different 

 amounts in different foodstuffs, and contained possibly in the 

 outer layers or husks of the grain. The difference in the fattening 

 properties of the two well-known adjoining fields in the Romney 

 marshes, with almost, but doubtless not quite, identical vegeta- 

 tion, may, as has been already suggested by Prof. Armstrong, 

 be explained in a similar way. 



In conclusion, reference may be made to one other problem 

 on which this new knowledge may possibly shed some light. 

 In cancer we have a pathological new growth of tissue, in which, 

 as Casimir Funk has suggested, a special vitamine may be 

 concerned. He raises the question as to whether it is possible 

 to inhibit this new growth by careful regulation of the diet with 

 a view to the exclusion of the special vitamine. Experimental 

 investigation so far seems to show that the vitamines for normal 

 and cancerous growths are not identical, and it would there- 

 fore seem possible to frame a diet that shall allow normal 

 growth to proceed but shall inhibit cancerous growth. 



I am greatly indebted to Dr. Funk, Professor Gowland 

 Hopkins, Professors Osborne and Mendel, and the proprietors 

 of the various journals for permission to reproduce the curves, 

 etc., used in the illustration of this article. My grateful thanks 

 are also due to Professors Osborne and Mendel for the loan 

 of their excellent blocks. 



Literature 



For excellent summary of, and references to, previous work see Casimir Funk's 

 article on "Vitamines" in Ergebnisse dcr Physiologie, vol. xiii. 1913. 



Braddon and Cooper ; 



British Medical Journal ^ 1914, p. 1348. 



