268 ANNUAL, REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 5 



tracts were among the addenda which were successful in this respect, 

 but only, as is clear today, because the fat employed in these experi- 

 ments was filtered butter fat. We know now that butter itself con- 

 tains certain of the essential vitamins, while yeast supplied the 

 others. These experiments confirmed a personal belief in the im- 

 portance for nutrition of minor constituents in natural foods, and 

 public expression was given to this belief; but the experimental 

 results were not then published. 



In the autumn of 1911 the results of later experiments were com- 

 municated to the Biochemical Society, and these were published in 

 the following year in a paper which made a general claim for the 

 " importance of accessory factors in normal dietaries." Funk at 

 about the same time impressively summarized the then available 

 knowledge concerning deficiency diseases, and proposed the name 

 " vitamine " for the substance of which a lack might in each case be 

 presumed to produce the pathological condition. On chemical 

 grounds J. C. Drummond suggested that the final " e " in Funk's 

 proposed name should be omitted, and this has become customary. 

 By 1912, then, there was fully adequate evidence for the wide im- 

 portance of vitamins, and from that time progress in their study 

 has been continuous. 



Immediately before the war and until near its end, American in- 

 vestigators were the chief contributors to this progress. T. B. 

 Osborne and L, B. Mendel at Yale and E. V. McCollum at Wisconsin 

 (afterward at Johns Hopkins University) were separately engaged 

 upon nutritional experiments with artificial dietaries. For a little 

 while after the present writer's publication in 1912, these workers 

 were not fully convinced of the necessity for a vitamin supply. 

 Osborne and Mendel believed for some time that they had succeeded 

 in maintaining rats upon purified diets. Soon afterward conviction 

 came, and important contributions to the subject were made at both 

 centers. In particular, American studies produced at this time proof 

 that vitamins existed in natural foods in different associations, and 

 led to a distinction between " fat soluble " and " water soluble " 

 individuals ; a distinction which, though in itself not of fundamental 

 importance, greatly helped later developments in the subject, many 

 of which have been due to workers in America. 



During the later stages of the war, when many nutritional prob- 

 lems had to be faced, intensive studies began at the Lister Institute 

 in London. These comprised pioneer work by A. Harden and S. S. 

 Zilva, and the important experiments of Harriette Chick and her 

 colleagues, which have continued to the present day. At this time, 

 University College, London, became also a center of activity owing 

 to the work and influence of J. C. Drummond, while the classical 



