MACHINE A BLESSING

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1933, Page 10

MACHINE A BLESSING

“GIFT TO HUMANITY.” LONDON, September 3. When, on Wednesday, the British Association meet at Leicester, they will discuss a range of scientific subjects unsurpassed in interest and importance. The presidential address this year will come from Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, perhaps the greatest living authority on bio-chemistry and probably as much as any man responsible for the development of our knowledge of vitamins. Nineteen years ago he became professor of bio-chemistry at Cambridge, and in 1921 was elected to the Sir William Ditnn Chair. In 1929 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and— an honour rare in the history of the great learned societies —he is at one and the same time president of both the British Association and the Royal Society. it is now forty years ago since Sir Frederick began his work on biochemistry, which has made him worldfamous, but it is only a little more than twenty years ago since lie made a. fundamental contribution to dietetics by the paper in the “Journal of Physiology” on feeding experiments illustrating the importance of accessory factors in normal dietaries. In this paper he drew attention to the serious effects on the health of animals resulting from the absence from their food of certain hitherto unrecognised principles, and although it was not until a year later that the term “vitamin” was substituted for Sir Frederick’s expression of “accessory,” the description has in twenty years become a general medical term and the discovery has, within its essential limitations, revolutionised science.

During a talk with Sir Frederick in a cottage in the heart of West Sussex to which he has retired for quiet in preparation for the meeting and for his address, he said: — “Since bio-chemistry is my special subject, and has been for thirty years, I am rather naturally going to talk about its progress. Roughly, thirty years ago it was pursued much as the study of organic chemistry was pursued, but with the opening of the present century, and during the development of this present generation, there began a great progress in technique which has continued and has advanced so rapidly that it is now helping us to follow surely the progress of the chemical events which are associated with life. A REVOLUTION. “This expansion of our knowledge and the change in language we can now use regarding living tissues—the fact that we are learning to follow with intelligence the chemical events which underlie visible events and changes in health and disease—is likely ultimately to constitute one of the principal revolutions in modern medical science. You can imagine the ultimate effects when, by this new knowledge, doctors are able to obtain a much greater grasp of disBase, by the ability to picture exactly how underlying events, and not merely visible appearances, are modified n human organs. “As to vitamins, it is, of course, Hillier expected of me (o speak. Twenty-one years have now elapsed

since my paper on accessory factors appeared, and much has happened since then. As a matter of fact, I do not like to be credited with what is called the ‘discovery’ of vitamins. Actually, .there was no sudden discovery. As is so often true in the advance of knowledge, facts alieady known had to be focused, so to speak. “The history of scurvy, and the existence of the disease known as beriberi, caused by the eating of polished or' decorticated rice by Eastern natives to the exclusion of all other food, should have made patent the influence of such food constituents. The former, of course, is due to the absence of what the world now knows as vitamin C. and the latter to that of the water soluble vitamin B.

“All I. personally did' was to emphasise the universal physiological importance of vitamins, and perhaps to stimulate the further investigations on them, with the results which are now known. We have won a groat deal of knowledge about vitamins, but there is yet much to learn. “Yes,” agreed Sir Frederick, in reply to an interjection,” such knowledge is having great effect in the diminution of infantile mortality, but public health has improved because of other things too —fior example, the far greater attention to the ordinary details of care for health. “Within the past two or three decades there has been a. tremendous improvement in the science df infant feeding, due to the increasing knowledge of mothers, and the spread, up and down the country, of welfare centres.

A HEALTHIER RACE.

“Incidentally, there- has been a considerable and valuable change ol mind in the medical profession regard ing this question. In the domain ot dietetics doctors are now advising and directing much more surely and ef ficiently than they were, shall we say, in the ’eighties, and the ‘nineties. “The effects of malnutrition through defective feeding in that • period were seen in the revelation ol our considerable C 3 population during the War. But the effects of our new knowledge of vitamins and scientific feeding are seen in this new, post-war generation, which, so far as the lower middle, and artisan classes are concerned, are, despite the long depression, surely much healthier. “But to get back where I started. One of the things f shall have to point out in ray address is that although we have acquired all this knowledge about vitamins, there is still more to be searched for and gained. Our knowledge of their action in the body is still empirical. How exactly, for example, does vitamin I) secure proper' bone development? We do not know that. We must find out not only what the vitamins do, but how they do it. “Nevertheless, our knowledge increases and spreads. It. is not generally realised how greatly progress in the medical sciences is accelerating. This certainly applies to our knowledge of the living tissues. What wfe once guessed at, we now know.” From this enlightenment, Sir Frederick turned to his survey of some of the othei papers which will follow his address. “1 am interested to see,” he said, “that the president of the Section of Zoology Dr James Gray, Director of the Sub-Department of Experimental Zoology at Cambridge, is going to deal with the mechanistic view of life.

It is a. point of interest to a great many people, although we do not hear quite so much these days about the old battle between mechanist and vitalist which once raged so fiercely. We are all more humble now so far as science is concerned, and here again is a. topic upon which we are not nearly so dogmatic.

“I may touch on the question of man and the machine, on which Sir Alfred Ewing spoke in his presidential address last year, but I shall be. more optimistic than he was. I take the view that conceivably the machine will probably prove to be the greatest contribution of science to humanity; indeed, I am convinced that its gift of leisure, if accompanied by the education of the majority and the right distribution of the plenty we now produce, should solve the great problems of our time.

“There are many other topics which should have their appeal to the general public. A paper on ‘Milk: its Handling and Food Value’ will raise anew 1 suppose, the vexed controversy on Pasteurisation versus the destruction of vitamins.

“We are to hear about the structure of some British coalfields, the national water supply, the education of the parent, the child in the changed home, and university and school training for business, and, what is particularly interesting to note, we shall apply modern discovery to our use, for the' cinema, is to be brought into play in a good many cases for illustrative purposes.

“It is now twenty-six years since the Society last met at Leicester, a quarter of the entire history of the British Association. We shall hear much about progress within this period, and I am sure in my own mind that we shall be able to show a rich contribution by those who have worked for the advancement of science to the common good.”