SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
: | Vitamines. 
By R. G. LINTON, Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, Edinburgh—Published in the 
Veterinary Review. 
For those associated with the nutrition of man and animals the 
last decade has been a period of peculiar interest, for during it dis- 
coveries have been made which throw light on the causes of certain 
diseases that for long have been surrounded with doubt and often 
erroneous conjecture. 
It is now not only known that seurvy, beri-beri, and rickets are 
due to dietetic errors, but the cause of each disease has been shown 
to be due to the absence in each case of a certain specific substance 
which is essential for health or even life itself. The previous concep- 
tion that a diet would be “complete” if it contained a sufficiency of 
energy and of protein, fats, carbohydrates, and mineral matter in 
proper proportion is now shown to be faulty, and that if wanting in 
certain specific substances the diet, however plentiful and varied it 
may be, fails to meet physiological requirements. 
These specific substances, and there are more than one, are most 
commonly known, as a group, as vitamines. As they are of such pro- 
found importance to health, the Medical Research Committee has con- 
sidered the time opportune to publish a report* of the present state 
of our knowledge concerning them, though there are many important 
features connected with them yet to be cleared up. To those interested 
in vitamines the report will be very welcome, since to keep in touch 
with and to follow clearly the progress that has been made in the last 
few years has not been easy. 
Of diseases due to nutritional deficiencies scurvy is probably the 
oldest. It has been known and dreaded for ages; it was more or less 
successfully treated over 300 years ago, and efforts, not altogether in 
the wrong direction, were made to prevent it. “Scurvy-grass” 
(Cochlearia officinalis) earned its name from its use as an anti-scorbutic 
when medicine, as we know the science to-day, was very juvenile. 
Thus William Salmon in 1685 tells us that “essence of scurvy-grass 
cures the scurvy . and many other diseases,” that “the juyce 
helps Uleers of the mouth and cleanses rotten Gums (scurvy).” But 
scurvy in Salmon’s time was regarded as a disease “ proceeding of 
repletion.” Many years elapsed between the publication of the London 
Dispensatory and Praxis of Chymistry and the dawn of understanding 
as to the real cause of scurvy. In 1881 Lunin discovered that mice. 
could not live on a diet composed of caseinogen, milk-fat, milk-sugar, 
and the ash of milk, and said, “It follows that other substances indis- 
pensable for nutrition must be present in milk besides caseinogen, fat, 
lactose, and salts.” Though Lunin did not know it, the summation 
of his investigation was probably the first shadowy forecast of the 
remarkable discoveries with which this report is concerned. In 1897 
Eijkman showed that beri-beri was due to feeding on a one-sided diet 
of polished rice, and that if the pericarp with the aleurone layer of 
the endosperm, which together form bran, were included in the diet 
beri-beri did not result. But the bad effects that followed such feeding 
he attributed not to the removal of substances that are in themselves 
Accessory Food Factors (Vitamines). 
ndon: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 
* Report on the Present State of Knowledae concernin 
Medical Research Committee Special Reports Series, No. 38. 
1919, p. 107. 4s. nett. eee 
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