Medicine: Grass for Health

When Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, was feeling low, he crawled on his hands & knees and ate grass. But Nebuchadnezzar also drove the Egyptians out of Asia, conquered Syria, destroyed Jerusalem. Last week Chemists George O. Kohler, W. R. Graham and C. F. Schnabel of Kansas City, Mo. put two & two together. In grass, they said, there is power.

After four years of analysis and experiment they found that grain grass contains all the vitamins except D, has 28 times more vitamins per pound than dried fruits or vegetables. Its riches: 23 times more Vitamin A than carrots; nine times more Vitamin BI than leafy green vegetables; 22 times more Vitamin B2 than lettuce; 14 times more Vitamin C than tomatoes and citrus fruits.

To make grass fit for human consumption, the chemists dried, bleached and ground the leaves of wheat, barley, oats and rye, produced a white powder with a slight malt flavor. The scientists ate this grass all winter, caught no colds, enjoyed excellent health. Three U. S. factories and one Canadian are now making powdered grass. Approximate cost: 6¢ per Ib.

Said the grass-eaters to the American Chemical Society meeting in Cincinnati last week: “The use of only twelve pounds of powdered grass a year . . . will supply the necessary factors for a liberal diet to all U. S. families at a price they can afford for the first time in history.” Once a vitamin is isolated or synthesized, researchers almost invariably find in it some long-awaited healing powers.

Doctors have already begun to feed powdered grass solution to newborn infants with hemorrhages. Of the 20-odd vitamins known to science, about ten can be extracted from plants or produced artificially. Most important vitamins on the physician’s shelf:

> Vitamin A: for night blindness and certain skin diseases.

> Vitamin B complex (consisting of some 15 related vitamins): for pellagra, and for deafness caused by deterioration of the auditory nerve.

> Vitamin B1 (thiamin): for beriberi, anorexia, certain heart disturbances, inadequate lactation, nerve diseases of alcoholism, facial neuralgia, cirrhosis of the liver, sciatica.

> Vitamin B2 (riboflavin): for blindness caused by inflammation of the cornea, certain skin disorders.

> Vitamin C (ascorbic acid): for scurvy, pyorrhea, rheumatic fever, wound healing, hemorrhage, cataract, insomnia, inflammation of bone marrow.

> Vitamin D (calciferol): for rickets, nervous spasms, softening of the bones, acne, psoriasis.

> Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol): for sterility, muscle weakness, diseases caused by degeneration of nerves.

> Vitamin K: for hemorrhage.