30 SYMBIOGENESIS 



vitamines occur normally in meat, fresh milk, and yolk of egg. They 

 are soluble in water, and insoluble, mostly, in ether. They are 

 thermolabile, and are destroyed by exposure for ten to twenty minutes 

 to a temperature of 120-130C., as well as by extreme dryness. Thus 

 cattle may, following on a long drought, suffer from a vitamineless 

 fodder. 



Funk regards vitamines as the mother-substance of ferments and 

 hormones, and of vital importance to the thyroid and other ductless 

 glands. It is thus evident that the diet standards of the text-books 

 must be revised in the light of their discovery, which throws a flood of 

 light on the milk and other food problems. White flours and corn flours 

 are deficient foods, because the vitamines have been removed in the 

 milling process. 



Wherever any cereal, robbed of its aleurone or vitainine layer, forms 

 the chief food of a people, there a deficiency disease appears. Rice is 

 eaten by more people than any other grain in the tropical regions of 

 both hemispheres. The marked increase of beri-beri caused by eating 

 polished rice, claiming thousands of victims yearly in Japan, etc., 

 coincides with the replacement of the primitive whole-grain stone- 

 milling by the modern steel roller. The United States Government has 

 already made the polishing of rice in the Philippines illegal. Indian 

 corn (Zea mats) is largely eaten in North Italy, the Balkan 

 provinces, the southern part of the United States, Brazil, etc. In all 

 these countries pellagra, which affects the skin, digestive organs, and 

 mental powers, is prevalent. The disease could be stamped out by 

 adding to the diet potatoes, one of the cheapest and most practical 

 sources of vitamines. Though the tax of 32s. 6d. a ton on potatoes 

 has been removed, the U.S. Government has at the same time closed 

 its ports to European potatoes, as a precaution against the introduction 

 of potato diseases, such as Spongospora, though pellagra is on the 

 increase, and American potatoes are becoming dearer. Rickets, scurvy, 

 osteomalazia, etc., are also deficiency diseases caused by the use, as the 

 main articles of diet, of such vitamineless foods as sterilized milk, 

 condensed milk, cornflours, starch and sugar. The mixed diet of most 

 people protects them from deficiency diseases. Vitaminous foods are 

 fresh milk and (though less rich in them) pasteurised milk, whole 

 grains, potatoes, carrots and other fresh vegetables, lime and other fruit 

 juices, beans, peas, lentils, and the like, meat, beef-tea, barley-water, 

 yeast, and apparently cod liver oil. The discovery of vitamines leaves 

 the vexed question of the relative values of white bread, standard 

 bread, etc., where it was, as the heat of the oven, far above that of 

 the autoclave in milk sterilisation, probably destroys the vitamines of 

 the wholemeal bread. (Nature, 12/3/14.) 



