1933 - Nutrition

Nutrition

U.S. biochemist Robert R. Williams, 47, isolates an antiberiberi vitamin substance from rice husks. Born in India, Williams began his professional career at Manila, where beriberi is a major health problem, but it takes a ton of rice husks to produce less than 0.2 ounce of the vitamin substance (see Suzuki, 1912; vitamin B1—thiamine, 1936).

Austrian chemist Richard Kuhn, 33, at Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute isolates a heat-stable B vitamin (see 1932; vitamin B2—riboflavin, 1935).

Polish-born Swiss chemist Tadeus Reichenstein, 36, and his colleagues at the University of Basel synthesize vitamin C (ascorbic acid) (see King, 1932). Synthesis will lead to mass production of the vitamin (see Haworth 1934).

Borden Co. introduces the first vitamin-D fortified milk (see 1930). Children are the chief victims of vitamin D deficiency and the chief consumers of milk.

British Colonial Medical Service physician Cicely D. Williams, 40, describes a deficiency disease with symptoms that include edema, bloated stomach, cracked skin, red or dirty gray hair, and even dwarfism. The disease is common among infants at Accra in the Gold Goast, and Williams will use its African name, kwashiorkor, in a 1935 report for the British medical journal Lancet, calling it the disease "the deposed baby gets when the next one is born," indicating that it may be caused by a lack of mother's milk. It will later prove to be a worldwide protein-deficiency disease that goes under different names in different countries.

Illinois-born physician H. Trendley Dean, 40, of the U.S. Public Health Service undertakes epidemiological studies that will relate a lack of fluoride intake to tooth decay (see McKay, 1916). Aluminum Co. of America (Alcoa) hired Illinois-born chemist Gerald J. (Judy) Cox, now 38, in 1930 to investigate the possibility that ingesting aluminum in drinking water might contribute to mottled teeth by interfering with the metabolism of lime and phosphorus in foods to form insoluble phosphates. He reported 2 years ago that this association was likely, but it will soon be proved erroneous (see Cox, 1939).