EPILOGUE 219 



systems of faith healing. This explains the blind accept- 

 ance of authority by the patient and the preference given to 

 procedures flavored with a suggestion of magic. Such diffi- 

 culties retard the progress of a rational school of thought in 

 the art of healing. 



Yet the ideas which we developed in the course of our 

 exploration into the origin of life are now beginning to bear 

 fruit. We have seen that life began with the enzymes or 

 chemical activators and is still continued by a multitude of 

 enzymatic reactions. The numerous enzymes in a complex 

 organism like the human body cooperate and counter- 

 balance each other to keep the whole body in normal health. 

 In disease this orderly working is deranged and the aim of a 

 rational treatment should be to bring the disordered chem- 

 ical reactions of the body back to their normal status by 

 administering the missing enzymes. Unfortunately we 

 know, at present, only few of all the jointly-working en- 

 zymes of the body: the vitamins and the hormones. Vi- 

 tamins can be extracted from food; hormones from certain 

 organs, or glands, of the animals. 



In order to find the source of vitamins, chemists fed 

 experimental animals on special diets lacking certain vita- 

 mins. The disease produced by the absence of vitamins 

 thus became known as well as the curative effects of their 

 presence. This work led to the discovery of potent sources 

 of the particular vitamins and later to their isolation in pure 

 crystalline form. The final and most difficult step was to 

 determine the chemical structure of these vitamins and to 

 make them artificially from inexpensive material, which 

 task has been successfully carried out for vitamins A, C, 

 and D; vitamin B is also known chemically. Most inter- 

 esting is vitamin D, popularly known as the sunshine vita- 

 min, because of its production in the body, or in many foods, 

 by the ultra violet rays of the sunshine. 



In a similar manner hormones are extracted from the 

 organs of animals and then subjected to a complicated proc- 



