Word: vitamins
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...agricultural experiment station of Pennsylvania State College, veterinarians trussed up Jessie, two-year-old heifer, and plugged her as though she were a watermelon. Dr. S. L. Bechtel of the station had noted that Heifer Jessie's milk contained Vitamin B, although none of the fodder she ate carried any. The question whether Jessie manufactured her own Vitamin B was very important...
There are only five vitamins known. Vitamin A stimulates body growth; Vitamin B prevents neuritis (beriberi is a characteristic disease following deprivation of this essential) ; Vitamin C prevents scurvy; Vitamin D prevents rickets; and Vitamin E must be present if an animal is to be fecund. All of these vitamins are extremely unstable chemical compounds. None of them has been definitively examined, yet their reactions on living animals are well-known and they can be isolated and handled as unseen principles...
Heretofore the biochemists have considered that all the vitamins are derived from plants, although it is well-known that ultraviolet light can energize cholesterol and phytosterol (cholesterol is a constituent of animal cells, phytosterol, of plant cells) to behave like Vitamin D as a rickets-preventive. It might be that the ultraviolet light actually created Vitamin D. Vitamins found in milk, cod liver oil and fresh flesh have been supposed to have come ultimately from plants that carried such vitamins...
...Heifer Jessie's first stomach that the Pennsylvania State scientists believe they will find Vitamin B manufactured. Each day they will scoop a trifle of predigested vitamin-less hay through the cow's little window and feed it to dieted rats. If the rats do not get neuritis, Jessie does make Vitamin B. If they do get neuritis, then the experiment will have been usefully foolish. It will have closed one more needless door of scientific research...
Stepp of Jena commended U. S. Experimenters Hess and Steenbock for their experiments in stimulating the production of vitamins in vegetable oils by means of the ultraviolet rays (artificial sunshine) of mercury lamps. . . . Too much vitamin-potent food might injure patients...