The Vitamine Manual E-Book

Walter Hollis Eddy

• Herausgeber: Walter Hollis Eddy
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

Walter Hollis Eddy

The Vitamine Manual

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

PREFACE

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

PREFACE

The presentation of essential data concerning vitamines to succeeding groups of students has becomeincreasingly 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 onthe 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 studentand 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 onvitamine 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 thedetails 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 isVitaminA, 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 thesubstance which he believed curative of an oriental disease knownas beri-beri. This disease is common in Japan, the Philippines andother lands where the diet consists mainly of rice, and while thedisease itself was well known its cause and cure had baffled themedical men for many years. Today in magazines, newspapers andstreet car advertisements people are urged to use this or that foodor medicament on the plea of its vitamine content. In less than tenyears the study of vitamines has increased to such an extent thatit is difficult to find a chemical journal of any month of issuethatdoes not contain one or more articles bearing on the subject.Such a rapid rise to public notice suggests an importance thatjustifies investigation by the laity as well as the chemist and inthe pages that follow has beenoutlined in simple language thebiography of this newest and lustiest of the chemist'schildren.

Dr. Funk christened one individual but the family has grownsince 1911 to three members which for lack of better names are nowcalled vitamines "A," "B," and "C." There are now rumors of anotherarrival and none dare predict the limits of the family. Had thesenew substances been limited to their relation to an obscureoriental disease they would have of course commanded the medicalattention but it is doubtful whether the general public wouldhavefound it worth while to concern themselves. It is because on betteracquaintance they have compelled us to reform our ideas onnutrition of both adults and babies and pick out our foods from anew angle, that we accord them the attention they demand anddeserve. Granting then, their claim upon our attention, let usreview our present knowledge and try to see with just what we aredealing. This will be more easily accomplished if we consider thevitamines first from the historical side and reserve our attentionto details of behavior until later.

A limited diet of polished rice and fish is a staple among thepeoples of the Orient. When the United States Government took overthe Philippine Islands in 1898 it sent there a small group ofscientists to establish laboratories and become acquainted with thepeculiarities of the people and their troubles. One of the firstmatters that engaged their attention was the condition of theprisons which were most unsanitary and whose inhabitants werepoorly fed and treated. Reforms were put into operation at once andthe sanitary measures soon changed these prisons to places notquite so abhorrent to the eye. In trying to improve the diets ofthe prisoners little change was made in their composition becauseof the native habits but the reformers saw to it that the rice fedshould be clean and white. In spite of these measures the firstyear saw a remarkable increase in the disease of beri-beri, and thelittle group of laboratory scientists had at once before them theproblem of checking a development that bid fair to become anepidemic. In fact, the logical discoverers of what we now know asthe antineuritic vitamine or vitamine "B" should have been thissame group of laboratory workers for it was largely due to theirwork between the years 1900 and 1911 that the ground was preparedfor Funk's harvest.

The relation of rice to this disease was more than a suspicioneven in 1898. In 1897 a Dutch chemist, Eijkman, had succeeded inproducing in fowls a similar set of symptomsby feeding them withpolished rice alone. This set of symptoms he called polyneuritisand this term is now commonly used to signify a beri-beri inexperimental animals. Eijkman found that two or three weeks feedingsufficed to produce these symptoms and itwas he who first showedthat the addition of the rice polishings to the diet was sufficientto relieve the symptoms. Eijkman first thought that the corticalmaterial contained something necessary to neutralize the effects ofa diet rich in starch. Later however, he changed his view and in1906 his position was practically the view of today. In that sameyear (1906) F. Gowland Hopkins in England had come to theconclusion that the growth of laboratory animals demanded somethingin foods that could not be accounted for among the ordinarynutrients. He gave to these hypothetical substances the name"accessory food factors." To Hopkins and to Eijkman may thereforebe justly attributed the credit of calling the world'sattention tothe unknown substances which Funk was to christen a little laterwith the name vitamines. Other workers, of course, knew of theseexperiments of Eijkman and Hopkins and in 1907 two of them, Fraserand Stanton, reported that by extracting rice polishings withalcohol they had secured aproduct which if added to the diet of asufferer from beri-beri seemed to produce curative effects. It isobvious that logic would have decreed that some of these workersshould be the ones to identify and name the curative material. Buthistory is not bound by the rules of logic and it was so in thiscase. Another student had been attracted to the problem and wasworking at the time in Germany where he also became acquainted withEijkman's results and began the investigation of rice polishings onexperimental lines. This student was Casimir Funk and a littlelater he carried his studies to England where he developed theresults that made him the first to announce the discovery of theunknown factor which he christened vitamine. Funk's studiescombined a careful chemical fractioning of the extracts of ricepolishings with tests for their antineuritic power uponpolyneuritic birds, after the manner taught by Eijkman. By carryingout this fractioning and testing he obtained from a large volume ofrice polishings a very small amount of a crystalline substancewhich proved to be curative to a high degree. A little later hedemonstrated that this same substance was particularly abundant inbrewers' yeast. From these two sources he obtained new extracts andcarefully repeated his analytical fractionings. The result was thedemonstration that they contained a substance which could bereduced to crystalline form and was therefore worthy of beingconsidered a chemical substance. In 1911, before Fraser and Stantonor anyother workers had been able to show to what their curativeextracts were due, Funk produced his product, demonstrated itsproperties and claimed his right to naming the same. At that hebarely escaped priority from still another source. The chemists inJapan were naturally interested in this problem and possessed anable worker by the name of Suzuki. Suzuki and his co-workers Odakeand Shimamura were engaged in the same fractioning processes withpolishings and entirely independently of Funk or other workers theytoo succeeded in isolating a curative substance and published theirdiscovery the same year as Funk, 1911. Their methods were latershown to be identical up to a certain point. Suzuki called hisproduct "Oryzanin." Funk's elementary analyses had shown thepresence of nitrogen in this product and his method of extractionindicated that this nitrogen was present in basic form. For thatreason he suggested that his product belonged to a class ofsubstances which chemists call "amines." Since its absence meantdeath and its presence life what more natural than to call it theLife-amine or Vita-amine. This is the origin of Funk'snomenclature.

Both Funk's original crystals and Suzuki's oryzanin were latershown to be complexes of the curative substances combined withadulterants and we do not yet know just what a vitamine is orwhether it is an amine at all but no one since 1911 has been ableto get any nearer to the identification than Funk and while he hasadded much data to his earlier studies he has himself not yet givenus the pure vitamine. For that reason it has been suggested byvarious people that the name vitamine should not be used since ithas no sufficient evidence to support it. Hopkins of England hadsuggested the name "accessory food factors." E. V. McCollum holdsthat we should call them the "unidentified dietary factors" andadded later to this phrase, the terms water-soluble "B" andfat-soluble "A"after the fat soluble form was discovered. Mostchemists feel, however, that the purpose ofnomenclature is brevitycombined with ready recognition of what you are discussing and thatit is unnecessary to change the name vitamine until we know exactlywhat the substances are. The result is that while still a mysterychemically they remain under the name of vitamine and the kinds aredistinguished by the McCollum terms "fat-soluble" A,"water-soluble" B, and "C."

We see that beri-beri then was responsible for Funk's adding toour chemical entities a new member but it does not yet appear whythis entity concerns our normal nutrition. To get this relation wemust turn for a moment to the state of knowledge in 1911 in regardto foods and their evaluation and what was going on in this fieldof study at the time.

A great advance in measuring food value was the discovery of theisodynamic law. Translated into ordinary language this law statesthat when a person eats a given amount of a given kind of food,that food may liberate in the body practically the same amount ofenergy that it would produce if it were burned in oxygen outside ofthe body. The confirmation of this law permitted us to apply to themeasurement of food the same method we had already learned to usein measuring coal. For convenience the physicists devised a heatmeasure unit for this purpose and naturally called it by a wordthat means heat, namely, "calorie." Using this unit and applyingthe isodynamic law it was merely necessary to determine two things;first, how many calories a man produces in any given kind of work,second how many calories a given weight of each kind of food willyield, and then give the man as many calories of food as he needsto meet his requirements when engaged in a given kind of labor. Themeasurement and tabulation of food values in terms of calories andthe investigation of the calorie needs of men and women in variousoccupations has been one of the great contributions of the pasttwenty years of nutritional study and to the progress made we oweour power to produce proper rations for every type of worker. Armyrations for example are built up of foods that will yield enoughcalories to supply the needs of a soldier and during the recent warextended studies conducted in training camps all over the UnitedStates have shown that when the soldier eats all he wants he willconsume on the average about 3600 calories per day. In France theAmerican soldier's ration was big enough to yield him 4200 caloriesper day if he ate his entire daily allowance.

But calories are not the only necessities. A pound of pure fatwill yield all the calories a soldier needs in a day but hislanguage and morals wouldn't stand the strain of such a diet.Neither would his health, for not only does his body demand fuelbut also that it be of a special kind. While there are many kindsof foodstuffs, chemical analysis shows that they are mainlycombinations of pure compounds of relatively few varieties. Thechemists call these proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and salts.Meats, eggs, the curd of milk, etc., are the principal sources ofprotein.Sugars and starches are grouped together under the name ofcarbohydrate. By salts is meant mineral matters such as commonsalt, iron and phosphorus compounds, etc. In selecting foods it wasfound that the body required that the proportions of these foursubstances be kept within definite limits or there was trouble. Weknow now that a man can get along nicely if he eats 50 grams ofprotein per day and makes up the restof his calories incarbohydrates and fats, provided that to this is added certainrequirements in salts and water.

It is also obvious that the foods given must be digestible andpalatable.

We had reached this status some time before 1911. But, a shorttime before this, there had arisen a controversy as to the relativevalue of different typesof proteins. The animal- vs.vegetable-protein controversy was one of the side shows of thisaffair. This controversy had led to a careful study of thedifferent kinds of proteins that are found in foodstuffs. Through abrilliant series of chemical investigations for whose descriptionwe haven't time or space here, chemists had shown that everyprotein was built up of a collection of acids which were differentin structure and properties, that there were some seventeen ofthese in all and that any given protein might have present allseventeen or be lacking in one or more and that the proportionspresent varied for every type of protein. It was then obvious thatproteins could not be considered as identities. More than that, itwas [...]