II. CHEMISTRY 405 



the first to state that these diseases were the result of a "partial hunger," 

 11 doficioiK'V of some unknown substance' that is present in v(My small fiuan- 

 tities in the outer layers (the silverskin) of the rice. (Jrijus called this sub- 

 stance "tlH> protective substance"; (irijns also made the lirst attempts to 

 isolate tliis sul)stance from an extract, from the silveiskin of the rice. He 

 succeeded in getting highly active fractions, but did not obtain a pure sub- 

 stance. About ten years later Casimir P'unk, working in the Lister Insti- 

 tute in London, obtained a crystalline substance from rice polishings.- lie 

 coined the word "vitamine" — an amine essential for life — for it. It was 

 proved afterwards however, that this product had no antineuritic activity, 

 and consequently it was not the desired substance. As it was shown sub- 

 sequently that several 'Sdtamines" were not amines at all, Drummond^ 

 proposed that the final "e" of the name "vitamine" be dropped. 



In 1926 Jansen and Donath, working in the same laboratory where 

 Eijkman and Cirijns had made their researches, obtained the crystalline 

 substance having a great antineuritic activity.'* They sent 40 mg. of it to 

 Eijkman, who was at that time in the Netherlands. Eijkman was able to 

 confirm the prophylactic and curative activities of this substance against 

 avian polyneuritis.^ Eijkman confessed that, before he received these crys- 

 tals, he had doubted if the vitamin would be a normal chemical single sub- 

 stance. Jansen and Donath succeeded in the isolation because they used 

 the finding of SeidelP that the antineuritic substance is adsorbed by fuller's 

 earth, and furthermore they found a fairly quick method (i.e., 10 days) 

 for testing the antineuritic activity of the different fractions by the use of 

 smaU rice birds (Munia maja). 



About ten years later several Avorkers in the United States, Germany, 

 and England improved the method of isolation and therebj'' obtained suffi- 

 cient quantities to establish its structural formula and to find methods for 

 its synthesis (Williams and Cline,^ Grewe,* Andersag and Westphal,* and 

 Todd and Bergel.'«) 



lated into English: Prof. Dr. G. Grijns: Researches on Vitamins 1900-1911. J. 



Xoorduijn en Zoon, Gorinchem, 1935.) 

 '^ C. Funk, J. Ph]isiul. {London) 43, 395 (1911); Die Vitamino. J. F. Bergmann, 



IVIiinchen and Wiesbaden, 1922. 

 3 J. C. Drummond, Biochem. J. 14, 660 (1920). 

 •• B. C. P. Jansen and W. F. Donath, Proc. Roy. Acad. Sci. Amsterdam 29, 1390-1400 



(1926). 

 * C. Eijkman, Proc. Roy. Acad. Sci. Amsterdam 30, 376 (1927). 

 "A. Seidell, Public Health Repts. (U. S.) 31, 364 (1916). 

 ' R. R. Williams and J. K. Cline, /. Am. ('hem. Soc. 58, 1504 (1936). 

 « R. Grewe, Z. physiol. ('hem. 242, 89 (1936). 

 » H. .\ndersag and K. Westphal, Ber. 70, 2035 (1937). 

 '» A. R. Todd and F. Bcrgel, /. Chem. Soc. 1937, 364. 



