118 TORREYA 



of methods of making it synthetically and the development of mass production 

 its price dropped to S.53 per gram or about $238 per pound. Thiamine is used 

 in the treatment and prevention of beri beri. of lack of appetite in children and 

 of various tvpes of neuritis and in the enrichment of flour. It is perhaps the 

 best known and most widely advertised of all the vitamins. 



The historv of our acquaintance with this vitamin begins with attempts 

 to cure a disease common in the far east, recognized by the Chinese as early as 

 2697 B.C. and known as beri beri. In the 19th Century it was found that beri 

 beri could be. cured by controlling the diet; for example, Takaki, Surgeon 

 General of the Japanese Xavy. about 1885, substituted meat and legumes for 

 part of the rice in the diet of sailors and reduced the incidence of beri beri 

 from between 30 and 40 percent to less than ^2 percent. Takaki believed that 

 this was because of the increased protein furnished. In 1912 Casimir Funk, a 

 Polish scientist, suggested that beri beri was the result of the lack of a specific 

 organic substance in the food. This new dietary essential he called a vitamin. 

 It was found that pigeons and other animals fed on polished rice developed a 

 tvpe of beri beri which could be cured by feeding rice polishings or extracts 

 made for them. The next step in logic w^as to assume that if vitamins were 

 reallv present in rice polishings and not merely in the minds of Funk and 

 those who believed as he did vitamins could be isolated and their chemical 

 nature determined. Many made the attempt. Two Dutch investigators in Java, 

 lansen and Donath. succeeded in isolating a small quantity of vitamin Bi in 

 1926. but its isolation in quantity and its synthesis in the laboratory were not 

 accomplished until 1934. Since 1934 many yeasts, bacteria, filamentous fungi, 

 and the excised roots of a number of higher plants have been found to suffer 

 from thiamine deficiencies. It has been found further that those plants which 

 grow without an external supply of thiamine make it, and the conclusion has 

 been reached that all living organisms need thiamine. Some make it from 

 simpler substances, others must be supplied with it. It is as essential and as 

 necessarv as water or minerals or any other indispensable item in the nutrition 

 of an organism. Its absence means death, its presence, life. 



Pxridoxinc. Pyridoxine or vitamin Bg is also a white crystalline com- 

 pound. Its empirical formula is CgHiiOgX. It is a derivative of an ill-smelling 

 liquid known as pyridine. In 1939 pyridoxine cost $12.00 per gram. It can be 

 purchased now for S3.00 per gram or about $1350 per pound. The medical 

 value of pyridoxine is ill-defined. It may be of value in the treatment of certain 

 muscular rigidities, of paralysis agitans and perhaps of other conditions. 



In 1915 Goldberger. a United States Pubhc Health Official, recognized 

 that dietary deficiencies might play an important part in the development of 

 pellagra, a condition affecting between 400.000 and 500,000 people annually. 

 In 1937 Elvehjem at the University of Wisconsin demonstrated that nicotinic 



