The Vitamine Manual | Page 2

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