Abstract
THE continued efforts of a large number of workers in many countries have resulted in definite advance in our knowledge of these dietary constituents, which have occupied first place in the attention of nutritional physiologists and biochemists for the past few years. We now know, thanks to their labours, much more of the origin and occurrence of the vitamins, and the vast sociological experiments in defective nutrition occasioned by the War have added considerable clinical experience to the exact but limited data yielded by the laboratory. Although we still remain in almost complete darkness regarding the chemical nature of the vitamins, there are not wanting indications that they are of relatively simple nature, and a study of their stability under various conditions serves not merely as a pointer for future work in the direction of unfolding their chemical identity, but also in the meantime places in our hands data of great practical value.
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The Present State of Knowledge of the Vitamins1. Nature 113, 718–719 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113718a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113718a0