VITAMINES 33 



can amount to but a minute fraction of the material 

 removed. Polished and unpolished rice, as one 

 looks at them side by side, seem to differ so little 

 that it is almost unbelievable that while the latter 

 is an efficient food the exclusive use of the former 

 may lead to fatal results. 



But even Eijkman's striking statistics and the 

 facts they brought out did not at once lead to the 

 conception of vitamines. The thought of the pathol- 

 ogist is so accustomed to deal with positive causes 

 of disease — with bacteria — with some intruder, some 

 materies morbi — that he develops a certain habit 

 of mind, and with difficulty believes in causation 

 which has, so to speak, a minus sign. 



I will return later to this particular instance of 

 the evil effects of fractionating a natural food mate- 

 rial : for the moment, lest you should associate the 

 subject too closely with the idea of actual disease, 

 I will turn your attention into another channel. 



As I have already reminded you, the scientific 

 assumption until a few years ago was that the only 

 essential organic constituents of foods are proteins, 

 fats, carbohydrates, and salts. But the scientific 

 data were mostly obtained during the use of natural 

 food-stuffs — meats, cereals, vegetables, etc. These 

 were, of course, known to contain many other sub- 

 stances besides those held to be essential, but 

 because, for the most part, they are present in small 

 amounts, the possibility of their importance was 



