Vitamin B1
Near the turn of the century, nutritional scientists discovered that the wasting nerve disease called beriberi, which had afflicted rice-eating Orientals for thousands of years, was caused not by a harmful agent that got into the body but by the lack of a beneficial agent which did not get in. A Dutchman, Christian Eijkman, found that chickens which ate nothing but polished rice developed beriberi, but that if the chickens ate the rice coatings they got better. For a quarter century Dr. Robert Runnels Williams of Bell Telephone Laboratories labored to extract the mysterious "vitamin" from rice coatings, finally squeezed 1/6 oz. from a ton of raw material. Later Vitamin B1, as it is now called, was synthesized. The synthetic vitamin is also known as thiamin chloride.
Beriberi is an unfamiliar disease in the western world and Vitamin B1 is so widely dispersed among staple articles of diet that B1 deficiency is not especially common. In the lay mind it has been overshadowed lately by the "anti-infective" Vitamin A (fish oil, spinach, carrots, milk, butter, etc.), the anti-scurvy Vitamin C (orange juice, lettuce, celery, etc.) and the antirachitic Vitamin D (fish oil, egg yolks, irradiated foods, etc.). These are of acknowledged importance to human health. But the fact is that doctors are using "the forgotten vitamin," B1, in clinical treatment of sick people more often than any other.
Vitamin B1 has a special affinity for and healing action upon diseased nerve tissue, and its efficacy in treating nerve inflammation associated with alcoholism is spectacular (TIME, Jan. 17). In the A. M. A. Journal last week Dr. George R. Cowgill of Yale declared that the vitamin seemed to help in the metabolism of carbohydrates by acting as a coenzyme. Other than that it seemed to have no effect on normal organs, and overdoses did not hurt a normal body. The human system simply took what it needed and threw away the rest.
When the body is diseased, however, the picture is different. Dr. Elias Lincoln Stern of Columbia believes that many sick people who take in plenty of Bt with their food are unable to utilize it because an alkaline condition of the blood or digestive tract neutralizes it. In such cases the hungry nerves snap up the vitamin, if any reaches them, like a hungry man wolfing a plate of ham and eggs. To sidestep possible alkalinity in the body, Dr. Stern administers the vitamin directly to the spine.
In the American Journal of Surgery last week he reported that he had treated dozens of diseases with spinal B, injections, including duodenal ulcers, tuberculosis, inoperable cancer, cardiac decompensation, uremia, anuria, tabes dorsales, multiple sclerosis. These were not all cured by any means, especially in the cancer cases, but in all cases there was a diminution of pain, the patients looked and felt better, and in some instances there was a rejuvenating effect which Dr. Stern attributed to the vitamin. His most touching case was an elderly woman who was almost pathologically addicted to sweets and had von Recklinghausen's disease (ugly nodules all over the body). She not only improved clinically but gleefully announced that she felt like a girl of 16.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.