SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS 



Abstracts of Communications. 



One hundred tenth meeting. 



New York Post Graduate Medical School, New York City, November 

 17, IQ20. President Calkins in the chair. 



25 (1607) 



Preliminary experiments with the fat-soluble vitamine (vitamin A) . 

 By H. C. Sherman, F. L. MacLeod and M. M. Kramer. 



[From the Laboratory of Food Chemistry, Columbia University.] 



The term "fat soluble vitamine" or "vitamin A" is here 

 employed to designate the substance or substances occurring in 

 butter fat, egg fat, codliver oil and elsewhere by virtue of which 

 growth is promoted when the diet is otherwise adequate, and the 

 characteristic eye disease, noticed especially in rats by Osborne 

 and Mendel, is prevented and may often be cured. If, as indicated 

 by some recent observations, especially those of Hess, the relations 

 of butter fat and codliver oil to rickets are so different as to 

 suggest that their vitamines are different substances, it becomes 

 conceivable that more than one substance having growth-promot- 

 ing and "antixerophthalmic" properties may be embraced under 

 the one term "fat-soluble vitamine" or "vitamin A" as now used. 



1. Distribution of the Substance or Substances "Vitamin A" 

 between the Fatty and Aqueous Phases in Milk. — Several years ago 

 McCollum stated in a brief note that fat soluble A is about thirty 

 times more soluble in fat than in water, in which case skimmed 

 milk will contain about half as much of this vitamine as whole 

 milk. On the other hand, Mellanby, studying experimental 

 rickets in puppies, and Hess and Unger in their studies of the 

 clinical role of the fat soluble vitamine, appear to have assumed 

 that their experimental diets could contain considerable amounts 



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