NEW VITAMIN

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 307, 11 December 1931, Page 10

NEW VITAMIN

SCIENTISTS ON TRAIL. AMERICAN RESEARCH. Science is now on the trail of a new vitamin, deficiency of which in food causes softening of the brain, it was disclosed at Montreal before the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, in a paper presented by Professor A. M. Pappenheimcr, of Columbia University, and Dr. Marianne Goettsch, of the Storrs Experimental Station, Storrs, Conn., says the “Manitoba Free Press. ’ ’ Dr. Pappenheimer told of experiments conducted with more than a hundred chicks on a certain diet originally conducted for the purpose of studying the effects of deficiency in vitamin E, the so-called fertility vitamin. These chicks developed an extreme softening of the brain, from which they svon died. Believing at first that this was a result of deficiency in vitamin E, the scientists supplied the deficiency by substituting a diet known to contain that element. To their surprise the chicks showed little or no improvement, which led them to the conclusion that the brain disease resulted from the ab-

sence of some other element from the food, another vitamin so far undiscovered. Scientists have long suspected that there were at least two more vitamins as yet unknown. Experiments are now being conducted to determine just what food contains the substance which prevents softening of tho brain. Drs. H. D. Branion, B. L. Guyatt, and H. D. Kay, of the University of Toronto, presented the results of their studies on rickets-producing qualities caused by the presence in diet of metals in tho same periodic group and unuouncod a discovery which, though at present only a curiosity, created considerable interest. Calcium and beryllium belong to the same periodic group of chemical elements. It was known that an oversupply of calcium in children’s diet would produce rickets, a disease cured by exposure to ultra-violet light, or the administering of ergosterol or cod liver oil, sfibstances which contain vitamin D, or the rickets-preventing vitamin. By substituting beryllium for 1 per cent of the calcium the scientists found the result to be disease “very close to rickets.” They found, however, that the disease was incurable by ultraviolet light and other treatments which are definitely known to cure ordinary rickets. Further light was thrown on the newly discovered hormone “sympathin,” which is described as “tho substance of the spirit,” and which seams to be closely allied to adrenalin in its beneficial effects on heart action. The discovery of tho now hormone by Drs. Arturo Bosenblueth ajid Teodoro Schlossberg, of tho Harvard Medical School, under the supervision of Dr. W. B. Cannon, was announced in January, but the scientists have been unable to isolate it in pure form, much less to produce it synthetically, as is done in the case of adrenalin. They have definitely established its existence, nevertheless, have located its source, and have determined, to a certain degree, its special function, in causing a marked increase in tho blood pressure and a definite influence on the rate of tho heart beats. In his paper Dr. Roscnblueth stated that, although sympathin had been found to bo very closely related in action to adrenalin, unlike adrenalin, which is obtained from tho inner layer of the adrenal gland, sympathin was found to bo distributed all over the body.