An Attempt to Estimate the Vitamine-Fraction in Milk

The isolation of the beri-beri vitamine from milk [Funk, 1912, 1], together with the important fact observed by Andrews [1912], that infantile beri-beri occurs when the children are fed by mothers suffering from beri-beri, suggest a new line of investigation into the etiology of infantile scurvy and rickets. The problems which present themselves in connection with these investi- gations have been already set forth [Funk, 1912, 2] and will be fully treated in an account in the Ergebnisse der Physiologie, Vol. 13. These problems are briefly the following. ( Is there a definite relationship between the amount of vitamines secreted in the milk and that ingested in the food? This point is of special interest because of the periodical appearance of rickets in winter and disappearance in summer, a period when the cows return to pasture. (3) What effect have boiling and pasteurisation on the vitamine content of milk ? All these points await their solution until a method for determining such small quantities is available. The present inquiry shows that the ordinary chemical methods for estimating vitamines can hardly suffice and attention at present must therefore be directed to colorimetric methods.