De morrhua nil nisi bonum / [Burroughs Wellcome & Co. (The Wellcome Foundation Ltd.)].

  • Burroughs Wellcome & Company
Date:
[1936?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: De morrhua nil nisi bonum / [Burroughs Wellcome & Co. (The Wellcome Foundation Ltd.)]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    produced in the skin of animals by sunlight.) The vitamins stored in the tissues or available for use in any animal are supplied directly and in quantitative proportion by the diet of that animal. The ultimate source of vitamins, therefore, is seen to be in the chlorophyll-containing plants, in which it seems that the process of photosynthesis is accompanied by the production of vitamins. The more highly differentiated forms of animal life are not dependent on light for the functioning of their fundamental processes of metabolism, although light can still affect some of their cells. But such higher forms have become dependent on a series of chemical substances for the formation of which light is necessary. Marine animals are no less dependent on this source than are land animals. The vast supply of microscopic algz and diatoms possessing photo-catalytic pigments form the source of food and vitamin supply for the larger animal plankton, such as the copepods and other entomostraca. These latter form the food for the young and smaller fish, and these again the food of larger fish. The ultimate source, therefore, of the vitamins contained in certain fish oils, such as cod liver oil, is represented by the free floating microscopic plants on the ocean surface. Natural Vitamin Products or Concentrates Research in regard to the vitamins has revealed their complicated nature. This is particularly evident with regard to irradiated ergosterol (calciferol), the most firmly established of all vitamin concentrates, as it is now reasonably certain that it is not identical with the Vitamin D obtained from animal sources. The available evidence® clearly indicates that ergosterol is not the only naturally occurring precursor of an anti-rachitic * Edgar Stedman: Reports of the Progress of Applied Chemistry, xx, 665, 1935,
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