VITAMIN RESEARCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21100, 6 February 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

VITAMIN RESEARCH.

SATISFACTORY PROGRESS.

Sir F. Gowland Hopkins, in his presidential address before the Royal Society on the occasion of the 269 th annua] meeting, referred at some length to late discoveries regarding vitamins. Although, unlike the hormones, ho said, vitamins were of exogenous origin, their activities in the body were equally potent and their functions in general as indispensable. The number of known vitamins had grown to seven or eight, and the study of their functions had become a complex matter, j At the same, time, nobody who was in j contact with the evidence doubted the reality and indispensability of these several functions. It. was highly satisfactory to know that we were within measurable distance of knowing the chemical structure of tv\o of these sub- i stances. We possessed proof that A itamin A was j rloselv related to the caratenes, and this j knowledge might well lead, without long : delav. to artificial synthesis of the vita- : min it.self. With respect to "Vitamin D ; it seemed probable, if not. yet quite cer- j Tain, that its artificial production was j already accomplished. Some, four years j ago the constituent, of animal and vege- j table substances, which was convened ; into the antirachitic Vitamin D by ultraviolet radiation, was identified as ergosterol by Rosenheim and Webster at the ; National Institute for Medical Research, j and concurrently by Windaus in Gottm- ; gen. . . ! A team of workers at the National 1 institute, led by Dr. R. B. Bourdillon, ; appeared to have arrived at the next j static, of isolating the vitamin products j of irradiation; and Professor Windaus, : following with his co-workers a different j route, had again arrived simultaneously ; at the same goal. There was no doubt ; that the substance which the British group now term " calciferol," and which i they had isolated as a dinitrobenzoate j from the mixed product, was identical : with the Vitamin T) which Windaus find . Linsert obtained by a different method; j ana there was little doubt that this sub- I stance, as obtained in either laboratory, j was the essential of Vitamin D in a state j of practical purity. One milligramme of ■ calciferol bad an antirachitic activity corresponding to 40.000 of the ncwlv j accepted international units. OCEAN'S BLUE WATERS. The main reason why the sea is such a beautiful clear blue on bright, sunny days is that it reflects the colour of the sky; i on a dull day you find that the blue sea appears largely to have lost its colour, and to have assumed a greyish tinge. Still, there is always a certain bluish j colour about sea water, and recent in- j vestigat.ions have shown why this is so. Chemists who have gone into the question j believe "that the blue tint is due to the j presence of copper salts. Copper is known ; iio exist in sea water, for it is washed ' out of the land and brought down to j j the sea by rivers. The salts which give j j the sea its blue colour seem to be chiefly ! 1 compounds of ammonia, in which sea i water is very rich, and copper. Ammonia j is present owing to the decomposition of the dead bodies of countless millions of sea creatures. LIGHT BEAM ON TELEPHONE. Using a beam of'light instead of a wire to transmit the human voice, physicists of the University of Idaho have invented what might be "called a light telephone. Since the system enables persons to speak over long* distances without stringing wires and without broadcasting messages to evervbody equipped to pick them up, it is believed the device may prove useful to the army signal corps and to the forest and ranger service. A sensitive photo-electric cell which detects minute changes in the intensity of light makes possible the receiving device. The sending apparatus consists of a flame fed by acetvlene and a reflector to focus the rays on the receiving point or destination of the message. NEW WAY OF HEALING WOUNDS. Workers in the research laboratories of a gas-nrodncing company in London have found a new way of healing wounds, relieving rheumatism of the joints and aiding sufferers from surgical tuberculosis, according to Sir Leonard Hill, F.R.S. He explained that c.oal gas light produced the long ultra-violet and infra-red rays, considered by radiologists to have curative effects. Swollen joints have been cured by the light and heat reflected by five incandescent gas burners. Sir Leonard sa'd. For sufferers from chronic rheumatism, the curative rays are reflected from a copper bowl, and in several cases have effected cures.