Nutrition in relation to bone growth and the nervous system / by Sir Edward Mellanby.

  • Edward Mellanby
Date:
[1944?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nutrition in relation to bone growth and the nervous system / by Sir Edward Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been given to what is now known as vitamin D—the real growth promoter—than that it should have been retained to designate the antixerophthalmic entity. The differentiation of the vitamin A complex into its constituents required the labour of a large number of investigators over several years, and it was not until after 1924 that it became possible to give the calcifying vitamin, i.e. vitamin D, to animals without also including the antixerophthalmic vitamin A. This could be done because in that year Steenbock & Black (1924) published their work showing that vegetable oils, devoid of fat-soluble vitamins, acquired the calcifying pro¬ perties of vitamin D when exposed to ultra-violet radiation, an extension of Huldschinsky’s (1919, 1920) discovery that children could be cured of rickets by similar exposure of their skin. This aspect of the subject was developed by the joint announcement of Rosenheim & Webster (1927), and of Windaus & Hess (1927), that ergosterol was the pro-vitamin D in fats, and that this substance could be converted into the vitamin by ultra-violet radiations. This story ended when pure vitamin D (calciferol) was prepared by Bourdillon and his colleagues (Askew, Bourdillon, Bruce, Jenkins & Webster 1930). As regards vitamin A, it became possible to examine more closely the nutritional properties of this vitamin when Euler and his colleagues (Euler, Euler & Hell- strdm 1928) found that carotene had the biological properties of vitamin A. Shortly after Karrer had obtained a highly concentrated preparation of vitamin A and determined its structure (Karrer, Morf & Schdpp 1931), the effects of adding this substance in pure form to synthetic diets could be studied in greater detail. About 1926 interest in the problem of incoordination in animals was renewed (Mellanby 1926), and it was ultimately established (Mellanby 1930) that a deficiency of vitamin A in the diet was the determining condition and that the other part of the original vitamin A complex, namely vitamin D, was not directly concerned with the aetiology of this disability. The problem of incoordination (In the lecture a cinematograph film was shown to demonstrate the problem to be studied.) Young animals, including puppies, rabbits and rats, become incoordinate when vitamin A and carotene are deficient in their diets. The basal diets used to produce the abnormal behaviour in the three types of animals are as follows: Dog: I Daily rations Cereal (flour, oatmeal, etc.) Lean meat Peanut oil Separated milk powder Baker’s yeast (or dried yeast NaCl Ascorbic acid Vitamin P2 80-200 g. 15-25 g. 10 c.c. 20-25 g. 5 % of cereal 1J % of cereal) 1 % of cereal 5 mg. 1000-2000 i.u,
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