Accessory food factors (vitamines) in the feeding of infants / by Edward Mellanby.

  • Mellanby, Edward, Sir, 1884-1955.
Date:
1920?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Accessory food factors (vitamines) in the feeding of infants / by Edward Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    IN THE FEEDING OF INFANTS.1 It is obviously a matter of great difficulty for a laboratory worker to open up a discussion concerned with the feeding of children. The task is not rendered easier by my consciousness of the excep¬ tional difficulty in arguing from one species of animal to another when dealing with questions of diet and metabolism. Every worker on the subject of vitamines has this difficulty always before him. We must also recognise that much of the accessory food factor story has not been extended to children or tried beyond the laboratory walls. It is just for these reasons, however, that a discussion in which the laboratory worker and the clinician meet face to face is of great value. The physiologist may throw new light on the points under discussion, and, still more important, the clinician may assist the investigator in evaluating his experimental results and so prevent the exaggeration of one fact at the expense of another. We have to consider the part played in the nutrition of infants by the three known accessory food factors: (1) antiscorbutic; (2) fat-soluble A; (3) water-soluble B or antineuritic. From the point of view of the children of this country we can probably eliminate the water-soluble B factor. Although infantile beri-beri exists in rice-eating countries and probably in other places where one¬ sided and limited diets are in use, the extensive distribution of this factor in food, together with its well-recognised resistance to heat, would appear 1 Opening Remarks at the Discussion at the Section for the Study of Disease in Children of the Royal Society of Medicine on