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TITLE: THE VITAMINE MANUAL
AUTHOR: WALTER H. EDDY
EBOOK: E06356 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

THE VITAMINE MANUAL

A Presentation of Essential Data

About the

New Food Factors

BY

WALTER H. EDDY

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY

_Teachers College, Columbia University_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

HOW VITAMINES WERE DISCOVERED

CHAPTER II

THE ATTEMPTS TO DETERMINE THE CHEMICAL NATURE OF A VITAMINE

CHAPTER III

THE METHODS USED IN TESTING FOR VITAMINES

CHAPTER IV

THE YEAST TEST FOR VITAMINE B

CHAPTER V

THE SOURCES OF THE VITAMINES

CHAPTER VI

THE CHEMICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF THE VITAMINES

CHAPTER VII

HOW TO UTILIZE THE VITAMINES IN DIETS

CHAPTER VIII

AVITAMINOSES OR THE DISEASES THAT RESULT FROM VITAMINE DEFICIENCIES

CHAPTER IX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE

The presentation of essential data concerning vitamines to succeeding
groups of students has become increasingly difficult with the development
of research in this field. The literature itself has assumed a bulk that
precludes sending the student to original sources except in those
instances when they are themselves to become investigators. The demand on
the part of the layman for concise information about the new food factors
is increasing and worthy of attention. For all of these reasons it has
seemed worth while to collate the existing data and put it in a form which
would be available for both student and layman. Such is the purpose of
this little book.

It has been called a manual since the arrangement aims to provide the
student with working material and suggestions for investigation as well as
information. The bibliography, the data in the chapter on vitamine
testing, the tables and the subdivision of subject matter have all been
arranged to aid the laboratory workers and it is the hope that this plan
may make the manual of especial value to the student investigator. The
management also separates the details necessary to laboratory
investigation from the more purely historical aspects of the subject which
we believe will be appreciated by the lay reader as well as the student.

No apologies are made for data which on publication shall be found
obsolete. The whole subject is in too active a state of investigation to
permit of more than a record of events and their apparent bearing.
Whenever there is controversy the aim has been to cite opposing views and
indicate their apparent value but with full realization that this value
may be profoundly altered by new data.

Since the type of the present manual was set, Drummond of England has
suggested that we drop the terminal "e" in Vitamine, since the ending
"ine" has a chemical significance which is to date not justified as a
termination for the name of the unidentified dietary factors. This
suggestion has been generally adopted by research workers and the spelling
now in use is _Vitamin_ A, B, or C. It has hardly seemed worth while
to derange the entire set up of the present text to make this correction
and we have retained the form in use at the time the manuscript was first
set up. The suggestion of Drummond, however, is sound and will undoubtedly
be generally adopted by the research workers in the subject.

Attempt has been made to cover all the important contributions up to
April, 1921. Opportunity has permitted the inclusion of certain data of
still later date and undoubtedly other important papers of earlier date
will have been overlooked.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance received in the preparation
of the manuscript from Dr. H. C. Sherman, Dr. Mary S. Rose and Dr. Victor
La Mer. Their suggestions have been most valuable and greatly appreciated.

WALTER H. EDDY.

_Department of Physiological Chemistry, Teachers College, Columbia
University, New York City, April, 1921_

CHAPTER I

HOW VITAMINES WERE DISCOVERED

In 1911 Casimir Funk coined the name Vitamine to describe the substance
which he believed curative of an oriental disease known as beri-beri. This
disease is common in Japan, the Philippines and other lands where the diet
consists mainly of rice, and while the disease itself was well known its
cause and cure had baffled the medical men for many years. Today in
magazines, newspapers and street car advertisements people are urged to
use this or that food or medicament on the plea of its vitamine content.
In less than ten years the study of vitamines has increased to such an
extent that it is difficult to find a chemical journal of any month of
issue that does not contain one or more articles bearing on the subject.
Such a rapid rise to public notice suggests an importance that justifies
investigation by the laity as well as the chemist and in the pages that
follow has been outlined in simple language the biography of this newest
and lustiest of the chemist's children.

Dr. Funk christened one individual but the family has grown since 1911 to
three members which for lack of better names are now called vitamines "A,"
"B," and "C." There are now rumors of another arrival and none dare
predict the limits of the family. Had these new substances been limited to
their relation to an obscure oriental disease they would have of course
commanded the medical attention but it is doubtful whether the general
public would have found it worth while to concern themselves. It is
because on better acquaintance they have compelled us to reform our ideas
on nutrition of both adults and babies and pick out our foods from a new
angle, that we accord them the attention they demand and deserve. Granting
then, their claim upon our attention, let us review our present knowledge
and try to see with just what we are dealing. This will be more easily
accomplished if we consider the vitamines first from the historical side
and reserve our attention to details of behavior until later.

A limited diet of polished rice and fish is a staple among the peoples of
the Orient. When the United States Government took over the Philippine
Islands in 1898 it sent there a small group of scientists to establish
laboratories and become acquainted with the peculiarities of the people
and their troubles. One of the first matters that engaged their attention
was the condition of the prisons which were most unsanitary and whose
inhabitants were poorly fed and treated. Reforms were put into operation
at once and the sanitary measures soon changed these prisons to places not
quite so abhorrent to the eye. In trying to improve the diets of the
prisoners little change was made in their composition because of the
native habits but the reformers saw to it that the rice fed should be
clean and white. In spite of these measures the first year saw a
remarkable increase in the disease of beri-beri, and the little group of
laboratory scientists had at once before them the problem of checking a
development that bid fair to become an epidemic. In fact, the logical
discoverers of what we now know as the antineuritic vitamine or vitamine
"B" should have been this same group of laboratory workers for it was
largely due to their work between the years 1900 and 1911 that the ground
was prepared for Funk's harvest.

The relation of rice to this disease was more than a suspicion even in
1898. In 1897 a Dutch chemist, Eijkman, had succeeded in producing in
fowls a similar set of symptoms by feeding them with polished rice alone.
This set of symptoms he called polyneuritis and this term is now commonly
used to signify a beri-beri in experimental animals. Eijkman found that
two or three weeks feeding sufficed to produce these symptoms and it was
he who first showed that the addition of the rice polishings to the diet
was sufficient to relieve the symptoms. Eijkman first thought that the
cortical material contained something necessary to neutralize the effects
of a diet rich in starch. Later however, he changed his view and in 1906
his position was practically the view of today. In that same year (1906)
F. Gowland Hopkins in England had come to the conclusion that the growth
of laboratory animals demanded something in foods that could not be
accounted for among the ordinary nutrients. He gave to these hypothetical
substances the name "accessory food factors." To Hopkins and to Eijkman
may therefore be justly attributed the credit of calling the world's
attention to the unknown substances which Funk was to christen a little
later with the name vitamines. Other workers, of course, knew of these
experiments of Eijkman and Hopkins and in 1907 two of them, Fraser and
Stanton, reported that by extracting rice polishings with alcohol they had
secured a product which if added to the diet of a sufferer from beri-beri
seemed to produce curative effects. It is obvious that logic would have
decreed that some of these workers should be the ones to identify and name
the curative material. But history is not bound by the rules of logic and
it was so in this case. Another student had been attracted to the problem
and was working at the time in Germany where he also became acquainted
with Eijkman's results and began the investigation of rice polishings on
experimental lines. This student was Casimir Funk and a little later he
carried his studies to England where he developed the results that made
him the first to announce the discovery of the unknown factor which he
christened vitamine. Funk's studies combined a careful chemical
fractioning of the extracts of rice polishings with tests for their
antineuritic power upon polyneuritic birds, after the manner taught by

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