VIII, B, s Vedder and Williams: Vitamines in Rice 187 



filtrate from this mixture, after the removal of the excess of 

 sulphuric acid with barium carbonate, was used to treat fowls 

 suffering from advanced polyneuritis, and we succeeded in 

 promptly curing 3 fowls by administering to each quantities 

 of this mixture corresponding to the extract from 200 grams 

 of polishings. This is approximately the quantity of the original 

 extract which, after hydrolysis, is required to cure such a fowl. 

 From this it is clear that little or none of the curative power 

 of the extract was lost during this process. This is a far better 

 result than we have obtained by any other method we have used. 

 Moreover, this result is a strong confirmation of the belief 

 that the curative base exists in food as a constituent of nucleic 

 acid, and it may be well at this point further to consider this 

 possibility. Schaumann(iO) originally thought that the active 

 principle of such foodstuffs as rice polishings, katjang id jo, 

 etc., was probably nucleic acid, but he supposed that the active 

 constituent of the nucleic acid consisted of phosphorus in some 

 form. This has been shown to be incorrect. Grijns(ll) in 

 testing this hypothesis isolated the nucleins in an impure state 

 from katjang id jo. His dried preparation contained 1.43 per 

 cent of phosphorus pentoxide, and another preparation in watery 

 suspension contained 3.2 per cent of phosphorus pentoxide. He 

 was unable to protect fowls fed on polished rice by either of 

 these two preparations. Grijns concluded that the nucleins did 

 not contain the therapeutic principle of katjang idjo, a con- 

 clusion with which de Haan agreed in 1910. Schaumann ob- 

 tained similar results; for in a later publication he stated that 

 in the case of pigeons suffering from polyneuritis he could 

 produce no effect by giving nucleins prepared from yeast. This 

 would seem to be conclusive experimental evidence that the pro- 

 tective substance is not contained in nucleins. Chamberlain 

 and Vedder in 1911(12) fed 4 fowls on polished rice plus 0.2 

 gram nuclein daily. They state: 



As 2 fowls out of 4 developed neuritis, it is not believed that the 

 nuclein used had any decided power to prevent polyneuritis gallinarum. 

 Since the incubation period for the 2 fowls which did develop neuritis 

 is perhaps slightly above the average, and since 2 fowls remained well 

 for fifty-six days, it can not be denied that there may have been a small 

 amount of neuritis-preventing substance in the nuclein, a quantity sufficient 

 to retard the onset of the disease. 



Hoping that this result could be improved upon, we obtained 

 a chemically pure nucleic acid from yeast (Merck's) and fed 

 4 fowls with polished rice plus large quantities (0.5 gram daily) 



