iQiS] Casimir Funk 3 1 3 



in the same laboratory, investigated also the effects of restricted 

 diets on mice, but from a slightly different Standpoint, his experi- 

 ments resembling, in certain respects, some of my own (to be de- 

 scribed later) on the influence of additions of different food con- 

 stituents. As a Standard diet whole-meal bread was chosen, to 

 which either salts, fats, or carbohydrates, were added. The mice 

 died very soon. Addition of sodium chlorid or other salts caused 

 very marked edema, much like this condition in infants. After 

 adding cane sugar neither edema nor diarrhea was observed. The 

 same applies to palmitin, but in this instance the food intake was 

 markedly smaller. Tachau explains this phenomenon as due either 

 to an aversion of these animals for such kinds of food, or to im- 

 paired resorptive power of the intestine. He suggests that the 

 utilization of sugar, for instance, is dependent on the intake of 

 proteins; in other words, that the constituents of the diet must be 

 well balanced. 



Chemistry of vitamines. Rice-polishings. Several Japa- 

 nese authors have tried unsuccessfully to isolate the active substance 

 from rice-polishings. Such attempts were described, for instance, 

 by Mural (22) and Kondo (23). A very exhaustive study was 

 published by Vedder and Williams (6). They repeated the frac- 

 tionation of alcoholic extracts of rice-polishings, following my 

 early method, with silver nitrate and baryta, and obtained a 

 crystallin curative fraction. Some of the other conclusions of 

 these authors are very interesting and confirm my Statements with 

 regard to yeast, namely that alcoholic extraction removes the Vitam- 

 ine only very incompletely, and that the vitamine is not very stable 

 in the presence of fixed alkali. They found, also, that hydrolyzed 

 extracts are very much more active than non-hydrolyzed ones. 



Drummond and I (24) made a very systematic investigation of 

 both hydrolyzed and non-hydrolyzed alcoholic extracts of rice- 

 polishings. This work was undertaken less with the view of isolat- 

 ing Vitamine than with the aim of separating new cleavage prod- 

 ucts of the latter. We also attempted to isolate the substances 

 described by Suzuki, Shimamura and Odake. The latter attempt 

 failed entirely; vitamine could not be precipitated with picric acid, 

 and no substances were found of the type of the a- and )S-acids de- 



