Science: Vitamin Bandwagon

From the meeting of the National Wholesale Druggists Association in Chicago last week came an astonishing fact: at least a fourth of all retail drug sales are synthetic vitamins or vitamin concentrates. They are now the largest single class of products handled by wholesalers.

The rush to buy vitamins does not stop there. There is also a large trade outside the drugstores. War industries with hundreds of thousands of employes do not trust to home cooking to keep their workers healthy and alert. Fearing vitamin deficiencies, they also provide protection from disease and fatigue in vitamin pills, capsules or biscuits to be taken daily.

Even larger quantities of vitamins are used in food processing for the enrichment of bread, margarine, milk, etc.

Four of the ten best-known vitamins are now manufactured in chemical works on a tonnage basis. The total annual production of synthetics and concentrates exceeds $100 million. Yet no synthetic vitamin was marketed before 1937.

The original list of four vitamins (A, B, C, D) has been extended to 13. Vitamin B, a complex, has been separated into at least eight distinct chemicals. In addition, vitamins E and K are more recent discoveries. Half a dozen others are suspected and may soon be recognized. With such complexity, the alphabetical system of names has broken down and the chemical names have come into general use.*

The Synthetics. Eight of the vitamins are now produced by the chemical indus-try in pure form, identical with the plant or animal product:

> Ascorbic acid (formerly vitamin C), contained in tomatoes and citrus fruits, is a simple chemical made from glucose. In 1934 its price was $213 an ounce; in 1937 it became the first of the vitamins to be manufactured synthetically and its price dropped to $3.60 an ounce. Today it is made on a scale of about 100 tons a year at $1 an ounce. One ounce is enough for the daily need of about 500 adults.

> Thiamin (formerly vitamin BI), preventive of beriberi, neuritis and loss of appetite, was formerly extracted from rice polishings, once cost $300 a gram. It now costs 37¢ a gram. Made by the ton, it goes chiefly into enriched white flour, to restore what is lost from the whole wheat in milling.

> Riboflavin (formerly vitamin B₂) is widely used in the poultry industry to stimulate egg production, is also used as a preventive of some eye inflammations and fissures of the lips. It is recommended for the enrichment of bread, but the supply is small because of the shortage of equipment in wartime. Within the past year its price has dropped from 75¢ to 58¢ a gram.

> Niacin (formerly nicotinic acid) is the chief constituent of the B-complex and prevents pellagra. It is now the cheapest of the synthetics—$5 a pound.

> Pyridoxin and pantothenic acid are the remaining known constituents of the former B-complex. They are newly developed, often omitted from multiple-vitamin preparations. Pantothenic acid is popular as a possible preventive of grey hair.

> Tocopherol (vitamin E) and methyl naphthoquinone (equivalent of vitamin K) complete the list of the vitamins that are available from chemical manufacture. They are still little used. The former is essential for reproduction in rats, so that it has become known as the sex vitamin, but doctors are still uncertain whether it has any such value in human beings. The latter is unique: it is not vitamin K but is equally effective in decreasing the clotting time of blood.

The Unknowns. At least five other vitamins have been identified chemically,* but no one knows how many more there may be, or what they do. For the vitamins not yet identified, concentrates are made from a list of weird items reminiscent of a Chinese pharmacopoeia: yeast, wheat germ, defatted milk, rice polishings, grass juice and liver extract.

One thing about vitamins is definite. They are no substitute for food; they provide no energies, calories or body-building materials, are merely accessory to diet. But in many ways they are still mysterious—hence doctors still urge the necessity for balanced diets and warn against dependency on pills.

The drugstore pill-eater can ensue health by taking the entire list, but if he is to buy wisely he has much to learn of both chemistry and medicine. As with the patent medicines of a former day, the greatest harm is the waste of money.

* Except for vitamins A and D, which are not manufactured chemically, are sold only as concentrates from fish-liver oils. * The five: biotin, choline, inositol, para-amino-benzoic acid, folic acid.