C. A. ELVEHJEM 



edge in those fields which he feels are important to the explora- 

 tion or his particular problem. In England I worked on the 

 possible relationship or vitamins to enzymes and during this 

 time I had the good fortune to meet a visiting Indian student 

 who was working on the B complex. He borrowed some liver 

 extract which I had taken with me from Wisconsin and after 

 working on it for a few days found, to his excitement, that it 

 was an extremely rich source. When I returned to Wisconsin 

 some months later I was confident that in liver we had a supply 

 of the antipellagra factor if only we could strain it out. Seven 

 years later, after many disappointments, we had the material 

 crystallized. It seemed to resemble a coenzyme that Otto War- 

 burg had characterized earlier, and when we fed these sub- 

 stances to different groups of animals the result was identical. 

 Within a few weeks Dr. Tom Spies was using nicotinic acid, 

 now niacin, as an agent in the treatment of pellagra. 



This story of niacin, which I took because I had some 

 first-hand knowledge of its discovery, is typical of many hun- 

 dreds of histories of basic research developments. Had I not 

 been permitted a year's work in England we might very well 

 have gone way off the track in our work. And only in a uni- 

 versity would I have been permitted seven years of what, to a 

 balance sheet, would have been totally profitless effort. The 

 work virtually eliminated pellagra as a serious public health 

 threat, but probably equallv important from the standpoint of 

 scientific knowledge, we were learning things of value about 

 enzymes and vitamins all along the way in our seven-year 

 search. The fact that we were finally successful was gratifying, 

 but our work would have been significant if we had failed our 

 final goal. There were, in fact, six other teams of researchers 

 close behind us, and I am sure one of them would have hit 

 upon nicotinic acid if we had not. And all contributed valuable 



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