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Show 4 Health and Beauty By DR. SOPHIA BRUNSON I ... NUTRITION (No. 7) The animals, as we have seen, suffered with red, inflamed eyes when fed on artificial chemical diets; but when given whole ntilk or butterfat, their eyes got well. Then McCollum tried the fat from egg yolks. That, too, helped the animals. He then tried pork fat, vegetable fats and lard, but none of them worker. He concluded that egg yolks and butterfat contained some principal that eyes must have to keep well. He called 1 whatever it was, Vitamin A. The beriberi vitamin was isolated iso-lated first, but it had to take sec-' : ond place, as Vitamin B. The news concerning Vitamin A spread rapidly. The Red Cross, j while battling famine in the Bal-! Bal-! kans, found thousands of children suffering from the same kind of sore eyes that had beset MCol-lum's MCol-lum's animals. In order to cure j them, the Red Cross sent food- stuffs such as -butter, eggs, and j cod liver oil to add to their diet. Those who received a sufficient I amount recovered rapidly. I Denmark was a dairying coun try, and yet so much of the dairy produts were sent out to feed the armed forces that the people suffered suf-fered severely from the lack of Vitamin A. An epidemic of sore eyes and night blindness swept the country, and was cured only by foodstuffs containing Vitamin A. There were outbreaks of 'beriberi 'beri-beri in Europe, especially in Germany, Ger-many, Austria, Poland, Russia and the Balkans. It was cured by the Vitamin B. Dr. Eijkman had wrestled with the berberi problem in Java and learned the cause and cure. In the devastated countries epidemics ep-idemics of scurvy broke out, and were cured hy Vitamin C. There were now three vitamins that were in some foods and absent ab-sent from others. These mysterious mysteri-ous properties were needed every day by all animals, man included. Herbiverous animals got theirs from the sun and vegetables, and the caVniverous ones, in turn, got theirs by feeding on other animals and also from the sun. McCollum still plugged doggedly dogged-ly in the new school of hygiene at Johns Hopkins university. An enthusiastic en-thusiastic young woman, Nevia Simmonds, was his helper. Rickets was a disease that plagued many thousands of human hum-an beings and animals. No one knew the cause, hence crooked and soft bones ruined many bodies bod-ies and lives. One day while toil-in toil-in and observing the effect of certain cer-tain foods on animals, Dr. John Howland, ' professor of pediatrics, came into the laboratory, and he asked MoCollum if he knew anything any-thing about rickets. (To Be Continued) |