1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vitamine
VITAMINE, the term now employed to designate certain
substances contained in foods. The exact nature of these
substances is not known, but they have been shown to be necessary
to the normal development of young animals (including
children) as well as to the maintenance of health and well-being
in adults. They are very labile substances which, existing
abundantly in raw foods, especially in uncooked fruits and
vegetables, become seriously attenuated or altogether destroyed
by cooking, desiccation, decortication and other refining processes.
There are probably a great many vitamines in natural foods —
live or quick foods, as they are called — but up to the time of
writing three only have been isolated. These are (1) the
anti-scorbutic factor; (2) the water-soluble B.; (3) the fat-soluble A.

The Anti-Scorbutic Factor. — As long ago as 1734 J. E.
Bachstrom observed that the disease known as scorbutus or scurvy
appeared to be related to the ingestion of salted, preserved and
dried foods. The disease in question was alarmingly prevalent
among mariners on long distance sailing vessels, and the British
navy was annually decimated by this scourge. The introduction
of fresh vegetables and fruits into the dietary of the sailors was
found to afford them complete protection against the disease, but
the knowledge thus empirically gained was not followed by any
scientific investigation, and though the door was thus widely
opened to the discovery of vitamines, these important substances
were destined to lie perdu for nearly 200 years. This anti-scorbutic
factor is the most fragile of the three which have so far been
isolated. It is present in large quantities in all uncooked fruits
and vegetables, and it is interesting to note that the popular idea
that foods which have been kissed by the sun have a greater
value than those which have not, finds some justification in the
fact that vegetables grown above ground are much richer in the
anti-scorbutic factor than root vegetables. This factor is well
represented in fresh milk, but boiling, pasteurization, or evaporation
completely destroys it.. The activity of the anti-scorbutic
factor is much increased by germination; thus, beans, peas, or
the grains of wheat or barley in the ordinary dry quiescent state
contain no anti-scorbutic factor, but if they be placed in water
and allowed to germinate, they immediately acquire this vitamine
in large quantities. There is a practical application of this
interesting fact which should not be lost sight of by travellers in
inaccessible regions.

The Water-Soluble B. — Prof. Gowland Hopkins of Cambridge
published in 1912 an article entitled “Feeding Experiments
Illustrating the Importance of Accessory Factors in Normal
Dietaries,” in which he called attention to the serious effects
upon the health of animals which resulted from the absence from
their food of certain hitherto unrecognized principles. In the
following year Casimir Funk claimed to have isolated a “Factor
X” which corresponded to the absent principles described by
Hopkins to which he gave the name of Vitamine, in the mistaken
belief that the factor in question contained an amino-acid. In
spite of its faulty derivation the name caught on, and the word
vitamine is now employed to include any of those essential
substances which Hopkins unfortunately described under the
term “accessory.” The experiments of these two observers
showed that the absence of the factor now known as the
Water-Soluble B. was the cause of the disease known as beriberi, which
a Dutch physician, Dr. C. Eykman, had in 1897 associated with
the custom of eating polished or decorticated rice by the natives,
to the exclusion of all other foods. Beriberi is a disease of the
nerves, and it was found that other similar affections of the
nerves, pellagra for example, could be experimentally produced
by withholding this vitamine, and cured by reinstating it in the
dietary; hence the term “anti neuritic” by which it is sometimes
known. This factor is essential to the normal growth, development
and well-being of young animals. It is present in great

abundance in all quick or natural foods, in grains and eggs. It is
also present in the brain, liver, sweetbread and kidneys of animals,
whereas from muscle or ordinary meat it is relatively absent.
Yeast contains this vitamine in large quantities. In the
vegetable kingdom, the leguminosæ afford it, uniformly distributed
throughout their substance; whereas in cereals it is confined to
the outside covering; hence the importance of unpolished rice
and whole meal bread. It is soluble in water, especially in slightly
acidulated water, and in alcohol, but not in fats. It resists a
relatively high temperature; it is present for example after
boiling for a short period, but is destroyed at 120° C.

This vitamine, as indeed the whole conception of vitamines in
general, was first described in 1901 by Dr. Eugene Wildiers of
Antwerp (1878-1908) under the name of Bios. In a paper which
appeared in La Cellule (Louvain) on April 2 1901 entitled
“Nouvelle substance indispensable au développement de la
levure,” this young Belgian observer set forth a good deal of the
knowledge which we now possess, but no notice was taken of his
work, and his conclusions were arrived at independently by a
different route about 12 years later.

The Fat-Soluble A. — In the year 1913 the third vitamine was
described by McCollum and Davis. Its absence was shown to
provoke a disease of the eyes, characterized by œdema of the
lids, ulceration of the cornea, blindness and ultimately death.
These lesions, even when in an advanced state, were cured by the
exhibition of the vitamine. The absence in some degree of this
factor is held responsible by some for the disease known as
rickets. Its presence is certainly necessary to the growth and
normal development of young animals. It is found (a) in certain
animal fats, i.e. milk, butter and glandular tissue; (b) in the
green leaves of edible plants. It is thus interesting to note that
though present in essential organs or so-called “noble” tissues,
it is absent from connective tissue and reserve tissue, such as lard
or the subcutaneous animal fats. Olive oil and other vegetable
oils do not contain this vitamine, whereas cod-liver oil contains
it in large quantities. Fat-Soluble A. is soluble in oil, but not in
water. It resists high temperature better than the other two.

Such was the state of our precise knowledge in 1921 concerning
these elusive substances. If only from the confused and cacophonic
nomenclature, it is evident that this knowledge was still in a
very embryonic state. That there is, in this matter, a very wide
field of interesting and fruitful research awaiting us is obvious
from the fact that the discovery of the vitamines has entirely
altered our conceptions of the causes and origins of disease.
Until lately disease was regarded as a sin of commission by some
unseen and subtle agency; the vitamines are teaching us to regard
it in some degree at any rate as a sin of omission on the part of
civilized or hypercivilized man. By our habit of riveting our
attention upon microbes and their toxins we had sadly neglected
the side of the question which concerns itself with our own
defences. We sterilized our children's milk against the bacillus,
and in so doing we deprived it of its vitamines and thus lowered
the resisting power of the victim, not to one microbe only, but to
all. The importance of vitamines has taught us that the
naturally nourished child is practically immune from the majority
of the diseases which in spite of our bacteriological and hygienic
knowledge have been raising the infant death-rate to a figure
which was as surprising as it was appalling. But it is to be
remembered that in order to attain to this immunity a child must
be born healthy; it must have been suitably nourished during its
intra-uterine life, and this can only be attained by feeding the
prospective mother upon foods which contain the necessary
vitamines in such an abundance as will satisfy the physiological
needs of two. The gross diseases due to absence of vitamines,
such as scurvy, beriberi, pellagra and xerophthalmia, called the
“deficiency diseases” (maladies de carence) are characterized by
symptoms which are acute and unmistakable, but it is certain
that long before these acute symptoms appear there will have been

a general ill-defined departure from normal health, called by the
French carence fruste or hypo-carence, and the condition may
never pass beyond this stage. It is thus not only futile but
actually dangerous to seek to estimate, as has often been done,
the minimum amount of vitamine which will insure protection
from obvious disease. What is required is not the minimum but
the optimum. Amongst these conditions of hypo-carence may
be mentioned the majority of the maladies due to the deficient
action of the internal secretory or endocrine glands, such as the
thyroid, thymus, supra-renals, pituitary, gonads and others,
which have already been shown to suffer severely from deprivation
of vitaminous foods. In the same category of hypo-carence
are also to be placed many of the so-called metabolic diseases
such as gout, arthritis, diabetes and others. These may be
occasioned directly by the vitamine deficiency, or indirectly by
starving one or more of the endocrine glands of the all-essential
principles. As might easily be supposed, this relative lack of
vitamines is peculiarly liable to show itself in the gastro-intestinal
tract. Digestive difficulties and intestinal inertia, appendicitis
and colitis have been shown in a great number of cases to have
been due to a lack of vitamines in the ordinary foods, a fact of
which anyone may convince himself in the matter of the widely
distributed disease known as intestinal stasis or chronic constipation.
It has often been remarked that dental caries or defective
teeth is an evil which has seemed to be very much on the increase
during the last 20 years; the period, that is, during which all fresh
and unsterilized foods have been withheld from the young in
order that they may be fed on devitalized pap which, in addition
to requiring no mastication, is, by boiling and other culinary
processes, completely deprived of the vitamine content so necessary
to the proper development and eruption of the teeth
themselves. Vitamines have already revolutionized our ideas on
dietetics. The erstwhile stereotyped proportions of the proximate
principles, proteins, carbohydrates, fats and salts which were
considered essential to bodily health have been so altered by the
discovery of the vitamines that the whole question will have to be
investigated and studied afresh, and the ineffable theory of
calories which was based on the curious assumption that the
behaviour of food in the human body was identical with its
behaviour in a test-tube, will retire to the limbo of things well
forgotten. The discovery of the vitamines presents would-be
scientists with a much-needed lesson in humility. It reminds us
that, in evolving man, Nature provided him with the foods
necessary to his growth, development and well-being, and that
in interfering with these natural foods by cooking, sterilizing and
refining, he has sacrificed their efficacy, sometimes to his greed,
but more often to his arrogant assumption of superior knowledge,
with the result that he has not only promoted the prevalence of
preventable disease, but has actually created others which but
for his misdirected energy would have had no existence.

 (L. Wi.)