Diseases Due To Dietary Deficiencies

In 1906, Professor Hopkins, a physiologist and bio-chemist said, "No animal can live on a mixture of pure protein, fat and carbohydrate, and even when the necessary inorganic material is carefully supplied the animal still cannot flourish. The animal is adjusted to live either on plant tissues or the tissues of other animals, and these contain countless substances other than protein, carbohydrate and fats. ..." He pointed to diseases such as rickets and scurvy as being due to dietary deficiencies. He was at that time probably unfamiliar with Eijk-man's work, otherwise beriberi would surely have been included with the other two.

Eijkman's work was neglected, but investigators were independently arriving at Eijkman's results. Two Englishmen, Drs. Frazer and Stanton, in a survey of the Malay peninsula during 1908-1909, showed that the native laborers never suffered from beriberi if fed with "cured" rice, and that sufferers could always be restored to normal health if fed with "cured" or unhusked rice in the place of the polished variety.

In The Philippines

The following year, Major (now Colonel) Chamberlain, of the U. S. Army Medical Corps, and a number of his associates, working in the Philippines, reduced beriberi cases among the Philippine Scouts by changing their diet in much the way that Eijkman and Frazer and Stanton had done. Among the 5,000 men composing the Scouts, there were always from 100 to 600 laid up with beriberi. This state of affairs continued until 1910. In that year Major Chamberlain substituted unpolished rice and a small quantity of beans for the polished rice. The diet prior to 1910 had consisted of 12 ounces of beef, 8 ounces of white flour, 8 ounces of potatoes and 20 ounces of polished rice. The modified ration was the same except that in the place of 20 ounces of polished rice, 16 ounces of unpolished rice and 1.6 ounces of diet beans were provided.

The figures speak for themselves. At the end of 1910 the beriberi cases dropped to 50; the following year there were three; in 1912, two; in 1913, zero.

Yeast - A Cure For Beriberi

Eijkman's pioneer researches and the whole subject of deficiency diseases was brought to the front again by Casimir Funk's investigations during 1910-1912. Following up the Dutchman's observations on beriberi, Dr. Funk showed that an excellent source of the "something" which can cure beriberi is yeast. Yeast contains a "something" which apparently is identical with the "something" in the husk from rice. But Dr. Funk's plans were ambitious. He wanted to isolate this "something" from yeast. The operations he employed for doing this were elaborate and technical. Those who are interested may consult Funk's original papers, references to which are given in the bibliography. Suffice it to state here that starting with 200 pounds of yeast, he ended up with one-twelfth of an ounce of a substance which he called vitamine for reasons already explained in the last chapter, and which substance he considered was responsible for the cure in beriberi.

An Attempted Isolation Of The Vitamine

While we cannot go into the laboratory details of this vitamine preparation, the method of procedure may be illustrated. You have your bird - Funk employed pigeons - and you feed it with polished rice. Beriberi develops; but since the bird is the hospital patient, we must call the disease polyneuritis. You next take a little bit of your ground yeast and mix it with the polished rice. The beriberi disappears. Yeast contains the curative agent, just as does the husk in rice. You next take your yeast and by a chemical reaction, or a series of such reactions, you get two fractions, A and B. You now prepare two more patients by feeding pigeons with polished rice, thereby inducing polyneuritis. To the diet of one of these beriberi pigeons you add a little bit of A. The bird does not revive, but gets worse and worse and finally dies. To the diet of the other animal you add a portion of B; the bird completely recovers. From this it follows that of your two fractions, A and B, A does not, and B does contain the vitamine. Whereupon you discard A altogether and from now on confine your attention to B. You now proceed by another series of chemical reactions to divide B into two or more fractions, and you test each fraction for the vitamine by its effects when added to a diet of polished rice. This again leads to a rejection of one or more fractions; and once again you need confine your attention to only a part of the entire material. And so you go on. By this process of elimination Dr. Funk's 200 pounds of yeast yielded him one-twelfth of an ounce of very active material. So active was this material that an amount of it weighing no more than one fifteen-thousandth of an ounce, when added to an otherwise unsatisfactory diet, cured paralyzed pigeons within a few hours.

At one time Funk thought that his isolated product was 100 per cent pure; that the one-twelfth of an ounce was all vitamine; and that no impurities were present. But now neither he nor other workers in the field are very certain of its purity. There are good reasons for believing that even this small amount of vitamine isolated from 200 pounds of yeast still contains substances other than vitamine. But Funk's work on the attempted isolation of the active substance did prove what a profound influence on life an incredibly small quantity of the substance exerts. One fifteen-thousandth of an ounce of vitamine product which, please remember, is still not pure vitamine, cannot add much to the energy value of the food; it certainly cannot add much to our stock of protein, carbohydrate, fat and mineral salts; yet its presence makes life possible and its absence makes life impossible. We are here dealing with a phenomenon which the layman finds as hard to grasp as the ether that is supposed to pervade all space; but the evidence in favor of a vitamine is more convincing than that in favor of an ether.

Let us hasten to add that no known substance which is 100 per cent pure will cure beriberi. Neither fat, protein, carbohydrate, mineral salts, nor any of the other countless products with which the chemist is familiar, will cure - always provided the substances used are pure; for remember that in the ordinary foods we eat, the vitamine is present among what we call the "impurities."*

Beriberi Vitamine And Water-Soluble B Vitamine Are Identical

The vitamine that cures beriberi is identical with water-soluble B vitamine.

* Dr. Williams, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, performed a number of experiments which led him to believe that some compounds belonging to the chemical group known as purines do show vitamine properties. This has not yet been confirmed by other workers. Where in the one or two cases Dr. Williams' work has been repeated by others, they have failed to confirm his results. But perhaps it is a little too premature to pass judgment.

The evidence for this is as follows: All foods containing water-soluble B (see summary) have been used successfully to cure beriberi; all other foods are valueless for this purpose. Foods containing fat-soluble A only are valueless. For example, no amount of butter fat, rich in fat-soluble A, is of the least value as a cure. On the other hand, unpolished rice, or yeast, or beans or whole wheat are excellent restoratives. Of course one food may contain more of the water-soluble B than another; therefore the amounts to be used to relieve beriberi will vary with different foods.

This leads us to a very definite test for the presence of water-soluble B. Will a portion or an extract of your particular food cure beriberi (which, remember, you can readily induce in birds by feeding them with polished rice, or with any other food deficient in water-soluble B) ? If it does, it contains water-soluble B; if it does not, water-soluble B is absent.

The discussion in the preceding, and in this chapter, and particularly the discussion of Dr. Funk's work, inevitably leads us to the conclusion that there is a something which is not any one of the recognized foods and which is present in foods in infinitesimal amounts, that is absolutely essential to all life. I say "all life" advisedly, for we have already seen how Professor Bottomley's experiments have proved that what is true of animals is also true of plants. This something Funk calls a vitamine. In the preceding chapter we have presented evidence to show that there are at least two substances of this type, fat-soluble A and water-soluble B. We shall presently give reasons for believing that there are more than these two vitamines.