p. 1 | VITAMINES by David Paulson, M. D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 6, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 14.

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VITAMINES

By David Paulson, M. D.

An Important, Delicate Food Product—Its Possibilities for Health

By David Paulson, M. D.

Medical Superintendent Hinsdale Sanitarium, Hinsdale, Illinois

“When people live on the fruits, grains, and vegetables that God originally provided for Adam, and refrain from entirely spoiling them by so many of our modern processes and inventions, there is no danger of having a ‘touch of scurvy.’”

A few weeks ago, while I was visiting the Pacific coast, a friend near Armona, California, took me out driving. Before we returned, a buckle came loose in the harness, the horses became frightened, and almost in an instant they upset the carriage. Nothing was wrong except an insignificant buckle, but that speedily made everything else wrong.

Dietetic Buckle Loose

Some recent wonderfully interesting dietetic discoveries indicate that there has been a “buckle loose” in our diet. This “missing link” has brought many a well-meaning mortal to grief, for it is still true that “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4:6.

Some years ago, Professor Eykman, of the University of Utrecht, Germany, was in Java studying a very prevalent and almost incurable Oriental disease called beriberi, somewhat resembling our scurvy. He was impressed with the fact that it was particularly those who lived almost exclusively on polished rice who had the disease.

Pigeons Destroyed by Polished Rice

He then undertook to feed pigeons on polished rice, and made the interesting discovery that in three weeks’ time they became ill, began to be crippled, were unable to hold up their heads, and even their throats became so paralyzed they could not swallow, and in another day or two they would die, from a condition strangely resembling the beriberi in human beings. Then Eykman took the shavings that had been removed from the polished rice, soaked them in water, passed a little of this fluid down through a tube into each sick bird’s crop, or in case of the birds that had not reached the stage where they could not swallow, fed them a little of these rice shavings.

And then this astonishing thing happened: In three hours’ time, they began to recover; and before the day was over, they were apparently as well as ever. It seemed like a veritable miracle.

In other words, God had put into the covering of the rice something that the birds absolutely needed, and nothing else could replace it. As little as three tenths of a grain of this mysterious substance was all that was necessary for the restoration of their health. Other observers noted that all over India and some of those other exclusively rice-eating countries, as soon as our modern polished rice was introduced, the people began to have diseases something like scurvy. The teeth became loose and fell out, and inflammation of the nerves was developed. It was also soon observed that when the old-fashioned rice was reintroduced, the disease disappeared.

Discoverer of Vitamines

Three or four years ago, Casimir Funk, in England, undertook to isolate this mysterious substance that was present in unpolished rice, and also to determine what other foods contained it, and by what means it is destroyed, and what influence it has on health.

He was fortunately successful in his search, and named this absolutely indispensable substance “vitamine.” He also made the important discovery that when fowls were fed exclusively on our modern steel roller process white flour, in three weeks’ time they were afflicted just the same as when they were fed on polished rice.

In other words, the vitamins are in the outer layers in the wheat, just as they are in the rice. The ordinary fine flour that everybody wants in order to have nice white bread has the vitamins eliminated. God put the vitamins in the bran, and in the yellow layer immediately under the bran, that the modern miller knows so well how to separate from the flour.

Why Certain Foods Produce Scurvy

It is generally known that in former days, when sailors were fed for a number of weeks on canned meats and other dried foods without any fresh foods or green stuff, they would ultimately develop scurvy. Their gums became diseased, certain nervous and digestive symptoms appeared, and in a short time they became entirely prostrated, just as the pigeons did when fed on polished rice. And it is also known that if these sailors could get into some port and secure some green stuff to eat, in a few days they would recover.

Dr. Evans, formerly health commissioner of the city of Chicago, says that few of the ordinary people ever develop this extreme type of scurvy. “Yet a large part of the population will have a ‘touch of scurvy’ between now and May. With some it will go no further than repeated spells of bad breath; with others, a multitude of vague aches and pains variously called rheumatism, sciatica, lumbago, gout. With others there will be attacks of sore gums. With others the face will be pale and a little bloated, with dark circles and slight bloat around the eyes. With others there will be patches of skin eruption. The reason is plain: for several months we have lived on ‘hog and hominy,’ or what is equivalent to it. Certain needs of our system have not been met.” Dr. Evans adds, “This is the season of the year when raw carrots are good for the complexion.”

Wonders of the Human System

The thyroid gland, or Adam’s apple, as it is sometimes called, produces a secretion that is absolutely indispensable to the human body. Children who are born with little or no thyroid gland grow hair resembling that of a horse. They are simple-minded, with no more intelligence than a monkey. Their faces appear shrunken. They are a pitiable sight to behold.

Some years ago it was found that if fresh thyroid glands are secured from a slaughter house, and thyroid extract is scientifically separated and given to such children, in a few months’ time they generally blossom out and become like other children; giving a striking illustration of how absolutely essential the thyroid gland is to the normal activities of the human system.

There are a number of other equally indispensable substances, or “hormones,” as they are called. We are now beginning to realize that the body cannot make these essential and indispensable substances out of protein, starch, sugar, and fats. It is believed that vitamins are the mother substance for the thyroid extract, for pepsin, and these other wonderful ferments which are present in such minute quantities in the body, but which are absolutely necessary for its normal activity.

Foods That Contain Vitamines

When people live on the fruits, grains, and vegetables that God originally provided for Adam (Gen. 1:29), and refrain from entirely spoiling them by so many of our modern processes and inventions, there is no danger of having a “touch of scurvy,” and many other similar diseases.

In 1850 Sylvester Graham led out in one of the mightiest health movements that has ever visited this country. Many people who had been considered incurable, were restored to health by adopting his dietetic ideas.

What was the secret of it?—He advised his converts to eat whole bread, which other people were despising, just as the nations of the East are beginning to despise unpolished rice, and suffer in consequence. He introduced the people to a normal, natural dietary. He taught them the importance of fresh green foods containing vitamins in all their strength. He hit on the idea of giving the people the very foods that modern science has now shown contain vitamins. We are just now beginning to learn more fully the scientific reason for the things he recommended.

Raw milk contains vitamins—more in summer than in winter, for then the cows have access to green things, which are particularly rich in vitamins. Raw meat also contains vitamins, simply because the animal has eaten food containing them; for as far as we know now, only the plant world can manufacture them. All whole grains contain them. So do yolks of eggs. Potatoes and carrots are particularly rich in vitamins. Green garden truck is a vitamine food par excellence. So are legumes. And limes, oranges, and lemons are especially so.

How Vitamines Are Destroyed

Vitamines may be peeled off from the grains, may be burned out by high temperatures, and are invariably destroyed in the exclusively dried foods. Baking heat, generally speaking, destroys vitamins. Persons who live exclusively on baked and toasted foods, and fail to add to their dietary others containing vitamins, will sooner or later begin to suffer with symptoms of some of the various deficiency diseases.

Who has not observed over and over again, fat, healthy-looking babies when they left their mother’s breast, then again when they had been fed a few months on condensed milk and patent baby foods with the vitamins burned out of them, on white flour bread from which the vitamins had been removed in the modern milling process, and on sweets and a few other foods that may have been wholesome and nourishing in themselves, but vitaminless—who, I say, has not seen such children become pale, anemic, scrawny, nervous, and begin to develop rickets, for exactly the same reasons that the pigeons became ill when fed on polished rice? A few teaspoonfuls of vegetable broth added to their food, a few fresh foods, and gruel made from genuine old-fashioned whole wheat flour, would in most instances have restored them completely to health.

New Light on Pellagra

Thoughtful observers are beginning to believe that pellagra, like scurvy and beriberi, is a deficiency disease. It is particularly prevalent among people who eat little or no green garden truck or other foods containing vitamins, but who live largely upon corn bread from which the vitamins are removed in the milling process and burned out in the baking, and on roasted bacon, which of course contains no vitamins, for the same reason.

Dr. Deeks, the Panama Hospital pellagra specialist, cures a large number of these patients by feeding them principally on vegetable foods, such as lettuce, celery, onions, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, beets, peas, string beans, also fresh fruits of all kinds, and eggs; and he insists that these patients religiously avoid cane sugar.

Dr. Cook, an eminent European specialist, believes that pellagra is due to a diet deprived of vitamins. It is of course not yet absolutely established that this is the only cause of pellagra, but it is certainly significant that the most successful cures are secured by feeding the patients on a food that is rich in vitamins.

Other Deficiency Diseases

There are many specialists who are beginning to believe that tuberculosis is largely a malnutrition disease; that the tubercular germs flourish in a soil that has been made favorable by living upon a one-sided diet that was especially deficient in vitamins.

Cancer is probably another deficiency disease. One thing is certain—that cancer is almost unknown among those who are living close to nature and on a natural, wholesome dietary. We shall no doubt have positive evidence, in the near future, that a predisposition to many other well-known diseases is induced by living on a diet that is deficient in these important, mysterious, protective substances, which are so absolutely essential to the normal function of the human system.

It must also be plain that such conditions cannot be cured by merely swallowing drugs, but only by a reform in the diet.

Too Many Inventions

Some of our many modern inventions and improvements are undoubtedly a snare of the devil, for which we are paying dearly in human suffering. For example: whole rice contains nearly four per cent mineral matter, while the polished rice, which nearly everybody is eating, contains only one eleventh as much. That is what we sacrifice for appearance.

The best part of our wheat, from a health standpoint, is taken out by the modern steel-roller milling process, because people want white bread. The old-fashioned stone-burr miller furnished us all the vitamins and the mineral matter in the flour, because he did not know how to remove them. But the new-fashioned process takes them practically all out; and what is left, and served on every modern table, is just as much a deficiency food as is polished rice, and if used by itself, would produce disease just as the polished rice did to the pigeons. Much of our excessive cooking and baking is unquestionably a curse to humanity—the cause of many of our deficiency diseases.

Worshiping False Gods

We are surprised that the children of Israel worshiped idols and went after false gods. But have we not also been chasing after false gods? We have sold good, wholesome food to the market, and then bought some of it back, paying several prices, for the sake of having it put up in fancy packages with the vitamins “processed” out of it.

Then we have gone to a doctor, and begged him for a prescription, which we did not need nearly so much as we needed to be reformed. We have carried the prescription to the druggist, and paid him to put it up for us, and then taken it according to the directions, and still continued to go astray.

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Vitamines

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Shall We Dispense with Physicians?

By no means. The conscientious and intelligent physician knows that diseases do not come without a cause, and he endeavors to trace human disorders to their source, to point out what needs to be avoided and what needs to be done. He knows that he can no more heal the sick than the farmer can grow corn. What the farmer can do is to cultivate corn. What the physician can do is to cultivate health, and that is what he is paid for doing.

We are fast coming to appreciate that health instruction is ten times more important than “drugs,” which in many instances only smother symptoms, and permit the patients to be comfortable when they are really miserable. It is too late in the day to continue healing “the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” Jer. 6:14.