274 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



Analysis of these crystals showed the presence of nitro-' 

 gen. Hence, in a later publication Funk christened these 

 crystals the anti-beri-beri vita-amine or "vitamine." 

 Amine has long designated to chemists a substance 

 basic in action and with a nitrogen content. Since the 

 crystals prevented loss of life it was natural to call them 

 the life (vita) amine. It is no discredit to Funk that 

 later, largely through his own studies and partly 

 through the work of others, the crystals which he be- 

 lieved to be pure vitamin were found to consist mainly 

 of something else. To-day we have not yet succeeded in 

 isolating the pure substance but Funk's researches laid 

 a basis upon which all fractioning attempts have been 

 based. The later discovery of other types of these sub- 

 stances developed a controversy in which he was criti- 

 cised for his selection of a name but none of the substi- 

 tutes proved more acceptable and his term is now in 

 universal use. Drummond suggested recently that since 

 the presence of nitrogen had not been demonstrated in 

 what we now know as vitamin A and C, we drop the 

 final e in the word and call them vitamins. Funk him- 

 self rather deprecates this change but the suggestion has 

 been generally accepted by workers in this field. 



Had the vitamin theory concerned solely this oriental 

 disease and its prevention, we would not have had the 

 extended public interest that exists in the subject to- 

 day. To see how this has come about we must turn to 

 the second line of investigations in 1906. Hopkins and 

 his pupils in England had arrived at an interesting re- 

 sult in connection with their attempts to prove the ade- 

 quacy of the food evaluation principles which we have. 



