Are We Starving to Death?
By Neil M. Clark
Summary: A progressive and compelling article about the work of Dr. William A. Albrecht, arguably the greatest soil scientist of the twentieth century, who contends that unless America makes a concerted effort to restore the health of its soil, it will suffer a slow extinction from the "hidden hunger" of mineral-poor foods. From the Saturday Evening Post. Reprint 21, 1945.
View PDF: Are We Starving to Death?
Ascorbic Acid as a Chemotherapeutic Agent
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: Dr. McCormick comments on his clinical success in using ascorbic acid—injected intravenously or intramuscularly—to fight infectious disease. He attributes the efficacy of the acid to "its chemical action as a reducing or oxidizing agent," allowing it to "rapidly neutralize" viral or bacterial toxins and adds that, unlike pharmaceutical agents, its use has no side effects. McCormick goes on to cite several studies supporting his clinical findings and suggests that the real reason for the reduction in rates of infectious diseases in America such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, and polio was not vaccines but the huge increase in availability of foods high in vitamin C, including citrus fruits and tomatoes. Unfortunately, throughout the document McCormick equates ascorbic acid with the entire vitamin C complex, which, as early vitamin research showed, is inaccurate. Ascorbic acid is but one part of natural vitamin C, the other fractions including rutin and other bioflavonoids, the enzyme tyrosinase, and in all likelihood other factors still yet to be identified. In fact, as Dr. Royal Lee pointed out, ascorbic acid is most likely just the part of the vitamin C complex that protects the other fractions, likely through the very same oxidative properties that make it useful as an anti-pathogenic agent. From the Archives of Pediatrics. Reprint 5C, 1952.
The Battlefront for Better Nutrition
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: "Yes, there is a battle going on," Dr. Lee writes in this 1950 article from the magazine The Interpreter. But the war Dr. Lee was referring to didn't involve guns or missiles. It was a contest hidden from public view, waged by industrial food manufacturers and processors against small-scale farmers and the country's nutrition pioneers, who saw firsthand the damage that processed foods were inflicting on the national health. Lee decries the substitution of bleached flour and hydrogenated fats for whole wheat and butter and condemns the FDA for allowing food processors and their paid "experts" to dupe the American public into trading real food for counterfeit. Includes the infamous testimony of Dr. Elmer M. Nelson, head of the nutrition division of the FDA, who in 1949 swore in federal court that "it is wholly unscientific to state that a well-fed body is more able to resist disease than a less well-fed body." Reprint 30E, 1950.
View PDF: The Battlefront for Better Nutrition
Butter, Vitamin E, and the X Factor of Weston A. Price
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee praises butter as an unparalleled source of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and E, as well as a source of "Vitamin F," a complex that includes the essential fatty acids linoleic acid and linolenic acid as well as arachidonic acid. Lee also explains that vitamin E comprises more than just the antioxidant tocopherols and cites evidence that overconsumption of tocopherols can lead to loss of bone calcium. Finally, Dr. Lee discusses Weston A. Price's discovery of a certain "Activator X"—found only in cows fed spring grass—that promotes the calcification and health of bones and teeth in human patients. 1942.
View PDF: Butter, Vitamin E, and the X Factor of Weston A. Price
Calories: Nutritional and Harmful Types
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this powerful article, Dr. Lee declares the "first principle" of nutrition: "Once a foodstuff has acquired a reputation for wholesomeness and health building, it [should] be always supplied in its unadulterated state, and unaltered by improper processing, refining, or aging." Lee goes on to document the negative effects of processed foods such as refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, and refined flour, pointing to their association with heart disease and diabetes years before conventional thinking recognized such links. From Natural Food and Farming. Reprint 30H, 1961.
View PDF: Calories: Nutritional and Harmful Types
Cancer: A Collagen Disease Secondary to a Nutritional Deficiency
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor notes a strong relationship between vitamin C deficiency and cancer. From the Archives of Pediatrics, 1959.
View PDF: Cancer: A Collagen Disease Secondary to a Nutritional Deficiency
Cardiac Failure in Vitamin E Deficient Cattle
By T. W. Gullikson and C. E. Calverley
Summary: Report on a study showing that a significant number of cows fed a diet devoid of vitamin E died suddenly between the ages of 18 months and 5 years, apparently from sudden cardiac arrest. An electrocardiogram was used to investigate the specific cardiac damage caused by vitamin E starvation. From Science, 1946.
Certain Nutritional Disorders of Lab Animals Due to Vitamin E Deficiency
By Alwin M. Pappenheimer, MD
Summary: A fascinating snapshot of some of the early animal research testing vitamin E deficiency. Dr. Pappenheimer details the specific cell and tissue degeneration resulting from feeding different species of animals a diet lacking vitamin E, the result most often being lesions in skeletal muscle that Pappenheimer refers to as a kind of "nutritional muscular dystrophy." Neural lesions were also observed in some species. In perhaps the most fascinating finding, a partial vitamin E deficiency in the diet of pregnant rats was shown to manifest only in the rats' offspring, echoing the findings of Drs. Weston Price and Francis Pottenger, Jr., in the 1930s that the effects of malnutrition are passed on to subsequent generations. Pappenheimer concludes, "The fact that a partial deficiency of vitamin E in the mother may manifest itself only in the offspring seems to me to be one of the most significant lessons that one can draw from this work. May not similar things happen in human diseases, and help to explain the supposed hereditary or familial character of certain nervous and muscular disorders?" From Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital. Reprint 57, 1941.
View PDF: Certain Nutritional Disorders of Lab Animals Due to Vitamin E Deficiency
The Changing Incidence & Mortality of Infectious Disease in Relation to Trends in Nutrition
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor reviews the downward trend of infectious diseases from the late 1800s through 1945 to determine whether advances in medicine were responsible, as commonly believed, for the great drop-offs in illnesses such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough, and scarlet fever. His conclusion? No. The declines of all the illnesses started before the introduction of widespread medical measures such as drug therapy or immunization and continued at about the same pace after these methods came into play. Instead, he proposes, the declines coincide with the introduction and widespread availability of foods rich in vitamin C, the "anti-infection" vitamin. Thus, modern transportation and refrigeration—making foods such as oranges, grapefruits, tomatoes, etc., readily accessible for the first time—were the reason for better public health, Dr. McCormick argues, not medical care and pharmaceuticals. From the journal The Medical Record. Reprint 5A, 1947.
View PDF: The Changing Incidence & Mortality of Infectious Disease in Relation to Trends in Nutrition
Chronic Idiopathic Ulcerative Colitis
By N. Philip Norman, MD
Summary: A classic, definitive work on ulcerative colitis. Dr. Royal Lee described this remarkable book, which his foundation published in its entirety in 1950, as "worth its weight in gold." Groundbreaking in its understanding of the lesions of malnutrition, the book makes a cogent case that ulcerative colitis is closely related to scurvy, the result of a deficiency of the vitamin C complex, along with additional nutrient deficiencies and other ill effects of a processed-food diet. 1950.
View PDF: Chronic Idiopathic Ulcerative Colitis
Comments on the Relation of Abnormal Heart Sounds to Malnutrition
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee traces the cause of heart irregularities such as extra beats and fibrillations to a loss of conductivity in the heart's tissue, which usually reflects a deficiency of factors in the B vitamin complex. Lee also describes how other conditions, such as hypoadrenia, lead to heart irregularities and discusses the relation of these conditions to deficiencies of various vitamins, such as vitamin F, G, and E2. 1953.
View PDF: Comments on the Relation of Abnormal Heart Sounds to Malnutrition
Coronary Thrombosis: #1 Killer
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor explains why he believes nutritional deficiencies, primarily of vitamins B and C, combined with cigarettes, pesticides, and alcohol, lead to coronary thrombosis. From the Insurance Index. Reprint 5B, 1953.
View PDF: Coronary Thrombosis: #1 Killer
Coronary Thrombosis: A New Concept of Mechanism & Etiology
By W. J. McCormick
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor discusses a new concept of the causes and mechanism of coronary thrombosis based upon studies of heart disease and nutritional deficiency, particularly of vitamin C. From the journal Clinical Medicine. Reprint 5F, 1957.
View PDF: Coronary Thrombosis: A New Concept of Mechanism & Etiology
Cost of Malnutrition
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this forward-thinking comment on preventive healthcare, Dr. Lee delineates the ways in which vitamin complexes ensure the health of workers. Vitamin A complex, for instance, helps maintain the integrity of mucous membranes and thus prevent infection and lost man hours. Vitamin B complex keeps the nerves and heart functioning properly; vitamin C complex promotes stamina by optimizing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood; vitamin D complex prevents cramps, irritability, and bone-calcium loss; and so on. Lee also links low back pain to a shortage of trace minerals. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.
View PDF: Cost of Malnutrition
Dietary Regimen in the Treatment of Renal Calculi (excerpted pages)
By Charles C. Higgins, MD
Summary: Selected pages from a journal review of studies investigating the connection between vitamin A deficiency and renal calculi, or kidney stones. This is one of the earliest tracts showing the critical role of vitamin A in the health of the kidneys. Although pH is discussed, the main thrust of the report concerns studies—conducted in the U.S., Africa, China, and other parts of Asia—all reaching the conclusion that vitamin A deficiency leads to renal calculi and lesions. From The Journal-Lancet, 1938.
View PDF: Dietary Regimen in the Treatment of Renal Calculi (excerpted pages)
The Direct Effect of Malnutrition on Tissue Degeneration
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this succinct address to the Seattle Chapter of the American Academy of Applied Nutrition, Dr. Lee touches on some of the major findings of early nutrition science that are still, incredibly, ignored to this day. Topics include the importance of calcium, phosphorus, and raw protein to tooth health; the total destruction of nutrients in bread caused by bleaching; the connection between vitamin E deficiency and heart disease; the dependency of connective-tissue integrity on adequate vitamin C levels; and the various lesions of B vitamin deficiencies. “What lesson can we learn from these few scattered facts…?” Dr. Lee asks in conclusion. “Simply that we must take the trouble in our homes to prepare our foods from the basic materials as far as possible, even to the extent of growing our vegetables and fruits on properly composted soil, if we can. The dividends will be quite possibly 20 years added to our life span, to say nothing of the life added to our years.”
View PDF: The Direct Effect of Malnutrition on Tissue Degeneration
Discovery of the Anticancerous Properties of the “F” Vitamine
By Professor Humberto Aviles, Mexico
Summary: A sweeping report on the special properties of vitamin F, a complex of essential fatty acids (linolenic acid, linoleic acid, arachidonic adic) that was first identified in 1929 by Drs. Burr and Burr. Though medical and government authorities never recognized the F complex as a vitamin, the author of this paper, along with many other clinicians and particularly Dr. Royal Lee, conducted significant experiments over many decades to prove its presence and effect in the human body. (Today linolenic and linoleic acids are acknowledged by conventional science as the "essential fatty acids.") Here Professor Aviles, in discussing his own clinical application of vitamin F in relieving pain in cancer patients, presents an extensive review of peer-reviewed literature on vitamin F from around the world, including research in Germany, England, Russia, and the United States. In addition to numerous references, Aviles includes a fascinating time line of the research on fatty acids and cancer from 1924 to 1953. Special Reprint 12-53, 1953.
View PDF: Discovery of the Anticancerous Properties of the “F” Vitamine
A Discussion of the Forms of Blood Calcium
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: This booklet is an authoritative presentation on the metabolism of calcium in the blood. It outlines the specific influence of various vitamins, such as vitamins F and D, on the movement and activity of calcium. There is more calcium in the body than all the other minerals added together; this is an important overview on the biochemical flow of our most abundant mineral. Includes a large chart of the flow of calcium throughout the body. Reprint 2, 1942.
Do You Want to Lose the Hair on Your Chest? Butter vs. Margarine
By Dr. Royal Lee and unknown author
Summary: Two documents contrast the incredible nutritional value of butter with the equally incredible lack of nutritional value of "oleomargarine" (what we call simply margarine today). In particular, the relationship between vitamin E and pubescent development is discussed, with Dr. Lee reminding readers that "sex development demands vitamin E, and butter is our main source in the American diet." Lee presents photos of boys and girls demonstrating the failure of sexual differentiation to occur as a result of nutrient starvation. He also discusses the vital roles of the vitamin F and D complexes—both found naturally and in their entirety in butter but not in margarine—in assimilating and distributing calcium in the body. From Iowa Business and Industry, 1953, and the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1948. Reprint 59.
View PDF: Do You Want to Lose the Hair on Your Chest? Butter vs. Margarine
The Effect of Aluminum Compounds in Foods
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: As aluminum cookware became more widely used in Dr. Lee's day, he and others soon realized the dangers of human exposure to this non-nutritional element. Aluminum poisoning was an unsuspected cause of degenerative conditions until Lee and others exposed the truth. This rare document is a classic, clarion call by the leader and founding member of the natural health movement from the 1920s to the 1960s. Lee Foundation Report No. 5, 1946.
Effects of Vitamin Deficient Diet on Rats with Reference to Motor Functions of the Intestinal Tract
By Louis Gross
Summary: Historically significant British study from 1924 on the pathological lesions appearing in the nervous system and digestive tract of rats fed vitamin-deficient diets. This article demonstrates the seriousness and excellence of early vitamin research. From the Laboratories of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, and the Institute of Physiology, University College, London. Reprint 24, 1924.
View PDF: Effects of Vitamin Deficient Diet on Rats with Reference to Motor Functions of the Intestinal Tract
The Etiology of Acute Coronary Thrombosis
By Hunter McGuire Doles
Summary: A medical journal report on the newly discovered role of vitamin K in the etiology of coronary thrombosis. Important vitamin research that still has not penetrated medical thinking. From the Tri-State Medical Journal. Reprint 129, 1959.
Factors Favorable and Unfavorable to Cancer
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: A brief article on the endocrine system and the relation of its malfunction to cancer. In particular, Dr. Lee discusses the importance of the thyroid gland in protecting against cancer. 1955.
The Facts Are Published
By the Therapeutic Foods Company
Summary: In this brilliant missive from Dr. Royal Lee's Therapeutic Foods Company, the "facts" published refer to studies showing that only natural vitamins—vitamins as they are found in food, as complexes of many, cooperating compounds—are capable of curing vitamin-deficiency diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, and rickets. On the other hand, isolated or synthetic fractions of the vitamin complexes, which we today define as "vitamins," do not cure deficiency diseases. For instance, few people realize that ascorbic acid (what is known today as "vitamin C" in spite of the fact that it is just one of the many compounds in the natural vitamin C complex) has never been shown to cure scurvy. Nor does synthetic thiamine cure beriberi, or synthetic vitamin D cure rickets. In fact, Dr. Lee points out, studies at the time indicated that isolated vitamin fractions might ultimately make these conditions worse. Scientific study supports these facts, he says, so why not be honest about it? 1941.
View PDF: The Facts Are Published
Fat and Its Utilization in Cholesterol Control
By Dr. George Goodheart
Summary: "Cholesterol is an important tissue substance and is not a substance to be avoided!" says Dr. Goodheart in this impressively knowledgeable article from 1965. While conventional health science was falling for the disproven theory that consumption of animal fat and cholesterol lead to heart disease, Dr. Goodheart was accurately informing his readers that cholesterol is an "important hormone precursor" that also "contributes structurally to the cell wall and semipermeable membrane construction." He exhorts his readers not to decrease their consumption of natural fats but to increase it, since it contains the natural mobilizers that help the body properly move and utilize cholesterol. He also cites the great British researcher John Yudkin, saying there is "no relationship between dietary fat and ischemic heart disease" and implying that a high intake of carbohydrates, not natural fat, is the problem when it comes to heart disease. Finally, Goodheart reminds his readers of a fact that has been known since the 1930s yet is still widely ignored by physicians and the public today: the amount of cholesterol you eat has virtually no effect on how much is in your blood. Much of what Dr. Goodheart writes here has been thoroughly corroborated by investigations conducted from the time of the article to the present, as explained in detail by Gary Taubes in his seminal book Good Calories Bad Calories. From The Digest of Chiropractic Economics, 1965.
A Few Facts About Vitamins
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this brief article, Dr. Lee presents some of his foundational insights about vitamins, including the fact that all vitamins as they are found in food are "complexes," or mixtures of chemically interrelated compounds, and that taking isolated vitamin fractions—unaccompanied by the proper interrelated compounds—is inherently dangerous. He also describes the limited applicability of animal studies with respect to the effective dose of vitamins in humans, citing the great difference in vitamin requirements among different animal species. 1940.
View PDF: A Few Facts About Vitamins
The Fight Over Vitamin E
By Eric Hutton
Summary: The story of the Shute brothers, Canadian medical doctors who gained international fame for treating heart disease with vitamin E. In spite of countless patients testifying to the success of the therapy, the medical professions in the United States and Canada tried every measure to silence and discredit the Shutes, much of it playing out in the popular press. The author of the article explains how the Shutes believed vitamin E helps alleve heart disorders: "The Shutes' theory about vitamin E is this: It is not specifically a heart medication; that is, vitamin E has no affinity for the heart as insulin has for the pancreas or iodine for the thyroid gland. The chief effect of vitamin E is to reduce the amount of oxygen which the cells and tissues of the body and its organs require for efficient, healthy functioning. Heart diseases happens to be the most dramatic example of the result of oxygen deprivation, and vitamin E's effect, simply stated, is to condition the tissues involved so that they are able to function normally, or at any rate to survive, on the greatly reduced amount of oxygen available to them when a coronary clot cuts down the oxygen-bearing blood supply reaching them." From Maclean's Magazine. Special Reprint 4-54, 1954.
View PDF: The Fight Over Vitamin E
Have We Forgotten the Lessons of Scurvy?
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor recounts the history of scurvy and its prevention, including a fascinating report by British medical officer James Lind, who describes his famous experiment of 1747 in which he cured sailors of the disease by feeding them fresh oranges and lemons. While full-blown scurvy had been virtually eliminated in twentieth-century America thanks to the widespread availability of citrus fruits, Dr. McCormick makes the case that subclinical vitamin C deficiency was a causative factor in many modern disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, heart attack, cancer, pneumonia, and even stretch marks in birthing mothers. Failure to recognize the tissue dysfunction in these disorders to be the result of vitamin C deficiency has led medicine to devise countless unsuccessful approaches to what appear to be largely matters of starvation. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition. Reprint 5H, 1962.
View PDF: Have We Forgotten the Lessons of Scurvy?
The Heart in Chronic Malnutrition
By J. Higginson, A. D. Gillanders, and J. F. Murray
Summary: A comprehensive review reprinted from the British Heart Journal documenting heart lesions caused by malnutrition among Bantu adults in South Africa. In all 12 fatal cases studied, "the hearts were dilated and hypertrophied," the authors noted, a "distinctive pathological pattern" they attributed squarely to malnutrition. Specifically, the high-carbohydrate Bantu diet, along with B vitamin deficiencies, are implicated. Reprint 74, 1952.
View PDF: The Heart in Chronic Malnutrition
History of the Cure of Pellagra, Vitamin G, and Dr. Goldberger
By Paul de Kruif
Summary: The amazing story of how Dr. Joseph Goldberger discovered and proved that the cause of the dreaded disease pellagra is not a microbe, as was fiercely believed by most scientists of the early twentieth century, but a nutritional deficiency. Dr. Goldberger's struggle to convince science and medicine of his findings reflects the tremendous sway that "germ theory" held in these fields at the time and which continues to dominate conventional beliefs about health and disease today. As this gripping excerpt attests, malnutrition underlies illness to a far greater degree than medicine and science have ever comprehended. Note: Although today pellagra is conventionally attributed to a lack of the single B complex vitamer niacin, in truth it is the result of a deficiency of a complex of multiple nutritive factors (including niacin) that was once known as vitamin G, the G standing for Goldberger. From Hunger Fighters, 1928.
View PDF: History of the Cure of Pellagra, Vitamin G, and Dr. Goldberger
Honey in Nutrition
By William Miller
Summary: An excellent overview of the value of raw honey. Miller compares the nutritional qualities of this extraordinary food, manufactured by bees for millions of years, to those of refined sugar. His conclusion? They're complete opposites nutritionally, with honey providing vitamins, minerals, and other factors critical for life and white sugar providing nothing more than empty calories. Reprint 119, 1955.
View PDF: Honey in Nutrition
Imbalance of Vitamin B Factors
By Marion B. Richards, DSc
Summary: A report on the dangers of synthetic B vitamins from the British Medical Journal. Isolated B vitamins, the author warns, create fundamental imbalances, causing problems that do not occur when whole-food sources of the entire B complex are used. "The present results," Richards concludes, "emphasize the need for caution in any attempt to improve the diet of...populations by indiscriminate addition of large supplements of single synthetic B vitamins." Reprint 10, 1945.
View PDF: Imbalance of Vitamin B Factors
Is This Shot Necessary?
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee recounts numerous "miracle drugs" of his day that turned out to harmful or even lethal to many in the population. (With pharmaceutical-related deaths in America numbering in the tens to hundreds of thousands today, this practice has continued unabated.) It is the "cooperation with natural constructive forces" that brings health, Lee writes, not "drug or poison therapy by which the cell activities are subjected to new and unknown reactions with new and unknown end or side results that...undermine the future welfare of the patient." This simple, sensible approach, Lee says, is the basis of his Vitamin Products Company, which provided complete, natural vitamins in the form of whole-food supplements. Lee also specifies some of the constituents of the natural vitamin C complex, which in addition to ascorbic acid includes an antihemorrhagic factor, a thrombin synthesis factor, a blood-oxygen factor, and a connective-tissue-integrity factor. Publication date unknown.
View PDF: Is This Shot Necessary?
It Can Happen Here: Vitamins, Cholesterol, Inositol, Aluminum
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this reprint from the magazine Nature's Path, Dr. Royal Lee rips food processors for adding poisonous additives and preservatives to their products and selling them as harmless to an unsuspecting public. Nitrates in meat, bleach in flour, and aluminum exposure are highlighted. "Are we...witnessing the crumbling of our civilization by reason of the compromise with principle that is being made by the guilty parties who have so thoroughly sold the public health down the river?" Lee asks. "'Just a little poison in the flour'....'Nitrates in meat never hurt anybody'....'Aluminum toxic? Are you crazy?'" Just a few examples, Lee says, of how large-scale poisoning of the population has been glossed over in America. From Nature's Path magazine. Reprint 30F, 1951.
View PDF: It Can Happen Here: Vitamins, Cholesterol, Inositol, Aluminum
Leukemia in Infants and Young Children: A New Etiological Concept
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: Writing at 81 years of age, the famous Canadian MD discusses the relationship between smoking mothers, vitamin C deficiency, and the rising incidence of leukemia in the very young. "This close link [between leukemia and] scurvy seems to have been completely overlooked by modern writers on leukemia," McCormick says, "the major stress being given to genetic changes in chromosomes, irrespective of possible adverse contributing maternal factors." Once again, medicine's myopic view of disease as the result of "bad genes or germs" prevented consideration of malnutrition as a possible cause of an illness barely known to our whole-food-eating ancestors. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition. Reprint 5G, 1961.
View PDF: Leukemia in Infants and Young Children: A New Etiological Concept
Lithogenesis and Hypovitaminosis
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: Dr. McCormick looks at the relationship between vitamin C status in the body and lithogenesis—the formation of calculi, or stones, in an internal organ. "Clinical observations and laboratory experimentation by the author on the effect of administration of vitamin C in altering the physiochemical properties of the urine and other body fluids, principally in eliminating deposition of phosphates, has led to the hypothesis of C hypovitaminosis as the basic etiological factor in lithogenesis in general." Note: Dr. McCormick equates vitamin C with ascorbic acid, though the latter is just one of the many factors that form the true vitamin C complex. From the journal The Medical Record, 1946.
View PDF: Lithogenesis and Hypovitaminosis
Maintenance Nutrition in the Pigeon and Its Relation to Heart Block
By Cyrill William Carter
Summary: An important excerpt about one of the critical B complex vitamins that got lost in the rush to synthesize nutrients. Vitamin B4 is a vitamer of the B complex that promotes proper nerve impulse transmission, yet it is not recognized as an essential nutrient by modern science. In the report, Carter notes that in pigeons suffering heart block that had been fed a diet devoid of natural vitamin B complex, supplementation with vitamins B1 and B2 failed to resolve the problem. When supplementation was switched to a yeast extract, which naturally contained the then-unknown B4 vitamer in addition to vitamers B1 and B2, the heart block was resolved. Oxford University scientists worked for over a decade to resolve the relationship between vitamin B4 and vitamin B1. Original source unknown. Reprint 3, 1934.
View PDF: Maintenance Nutrition in the Pigeon and Its Relation to Heart Block
Maternal Malnutrition and Congenital Deformity
By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD
Summary: Dr. Hillemann breaks down, by cause, the number of birth defects occurring in the United States in 1955, noting in particular the increasing numbers of defects attributable to environmental chemicals, food additives, and prenatal malnutrition. The report includes a comprehensive discussion of the role of vitamins and minerals in prenatal nutrition, addressing each nutrient individually. Reprint 66B, circa 1956.
Maternal Malnutrition and Fetal Prenatal Developmental Malformations
By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD
Summary: A thoroughly researched report on the birth and developmental defects known to result from specific nutrient deficiencies in human and test-animal mothers during pregnancy. Dr. Hillemann covers deficiencies of vitamins A, C, and E, fats, carbohydrates, the B complex vitamers (including folate), protein, calcium, phosphorous, and manganese. Includes 61 references. Reprint 66A, 1956.
View PDF: Maternal Malnutrition and Fetal Prenatal Developmental Malformations
Modern Miracle Men
By Rex Beach
Summary: A fascinating document from the U.S. Senate that originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine. Beach describes the work of Dr. Charles Northern, whom he credits as the first person to show conclusively that mineral-deficient soils produce nutrient-deficient food plants, which in turn lead to nutrient deficiencies in the livestock and humans that eat them. A historically significant record of the decline of America's soils, nutrition, and health. Reprint 109, 1936.
View PDF: Modern Miracle Men
The National Malnutrition
By D. T. Quigley, MD
Summary: The complete book published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. A well-known cancer specialist from Omaha writes about the disgraceful nutritional status of the American people and makes the case that it is malnutrition more than anything that is responsible for the the amazing rate of cancer in the United States. Decades ahead of his time, Dr. Quigley warns Americans about corn syrup and refined sugar, explaining that cancer cells thrive on such artificial and refined sweeteners. 1943.
View PDF: The National Malnutrition
Natural Versus Synthetic Supplements
By Judith A. DeCava
Summary: This manifesto of whole-food nutrition should be standard reading for anyone even thinking about taking or prescribing vitamin supplements. DeCava, a clinical nutritionist and meticulous researcher, spells out the precise differences between natural and synthetic supplements in light of modern nutritional discoveries. While studies have famously shown the health benefits of recently discovered phytochemicals such as lycopene or anthocyanins, DeCava points out these benefits occur only when the phytochemicals are eaten as part of the food they come naturally packaged in. When isolated from the rest of the food, "they never seem to work as well in people," DeCava writes. This is similar to the message of Dr. Royal Lee, who insisted 80 years ago that vitamins are not isolated chemicals, as chemists and pharmacists have defined them, but they are a cooperation of compounds that work synergistically to produce a nutritive effect. Once isolated, food fractions of any type may have a pharmacological (drug-like) effect, but they are not nutritive and no longer fall under the category of nutrient. From Whole Food Nutrition Journal, 2003.
View PDF: Natural Versus Synthetic Supplements
Natural Vitamin E for Heart Diseases
Authors unknown
Summary: A riveting article documenting the success of vitamin E therapy in the treatment of heart disease, published by Popular Science Digest. The key to this success, the authors emphasize, is the use of natural vitamin E over synthetic, the former having been shown to be "highly effective in the treatment of coronary disease, the incidence of which appears to be linked with a deficiency of vitamin E in the diet dating from the beginning of the century, when millers discarded vitamin E in the processing of grain." While the authors mistakenly confuse isolated natural alpha-tocopherol with the natural vitamin E complex (which includes alpha-tocopherol but other factors in addition), they sum the case for natural vitamin therapy over pharmaceutical drugs brilliantly: "Alpha tocopherol (vitamin E) therapy has the distinctive feature of improving the function of damaged hearts by attacking the underlying pathological changes. Heretofore, the drugs at the disposal of the cardiologist such as digitalis, quinidine, the mercurial diuretics, and nitro-glycerine have helped to re-establish more normal function, but have left the basic pathology unaltered." In other words, vitamins treat the cause, not the symptoms, as drugs do. The overwhelming clinical success reported in treating heart disease with vitamin E, the article concludes, "is a case for the closest and completely unbiased examination, by those competent to do so, of the claims of those who have developed and sponsored vitamin E therapy." Words that still ring true today. Reprint 40A, 1953.
View PDF: Natural Vitamin E for Heart Diseases
Natural vs. Synthetic or Crystalline Vitamins
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this brief article, Dr. Lee presents his classic metaphor likening a true vitamin to a watch. Just as a watch consists of numerous pieces that all work together to perform a function (telling time), a true vitamin is a complex of countless synergistic factors that work together to perform the function of delivering a nutritive effect to the body. And just as separating a few pieces from a watch and expecting them to tell time is absurd, isolating (or synthesizing) a single component of a natural vitamin and expecting it to nourish the body is folly. 1952.
The Need for Vitamins
By L. Stambovsky
Summary: In this article, written amidst the Great Depression and the outset of World War II, the author describes the vitamin-poor state of the typical American citizen in terms that still apply today. "Quantitatively, most Americans get enough calories in the form of [refined] carbohydrates....But refined sugar and starch, while they are energy sources, provide little or no accessory or vital food factors [i.e., vitamins and minerals]." This basic message sums up the work of many of the early nutritionists, who tried in vain to communicate the fact that nutrient deficiencies are at the root of most modern degenerative illness. Includes a good chart listing various vitamin deficiencies and their associated diseases. From Drug and Cosmetic Industry magazine. Reprint 31, 1942.
View PDF: The Need for Vitamins
New Light on the Biological Role of Vitamin E
By Herbert M. Evans
Summary: One of the original researchers of vitamin E reveals insights about the vitamin that are not widely known today, citing 41 references that mark the earliest research done on vitamin E deficiency. Evans specifically identifies fresh wheat germ oil as the greatest source of vitamin E, referring to it as the "least contaminated form" available. As that statement illustrates, the early vitamin researchers knew that true, complete vitamins are found only in food. From Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital. Reprint 56, 1939.
Nutrition in Everyday Practice (excerpts)
By E. C. Robertson and F. F. Tisdall and by Dr. E. V. McCollum
Summary: Excerpts from two chapters of a 1939 compilation by the Canadian Medical Association, which admits that "the practical application of facts concerning nutrition has not kept pace with our increasing knowledge" and warns Canadian physicians that they "must increase their interest in this problem of normal nutrition, otherwise the public will seek information on this subject elsewhere." (Advice that was, tragically, almost wholly ignored.) In the chapter "Nutrition and Resistance to Disease,” Roberston and Tisdall explain that while clinical evidence regarding nutrient deficiencies in humans can be difficult to obtain because of experimental limitations, this is not the case for animal studies, which show quite clearly the effects of even "comparatively slight" shortages in vitamins. The authors present studies showing drastic differences in resistance to disease in animals fed a diet sufficient in nutrients and those fed diets deficient in, respectively, vitamins A, B, and D; minerals; and animal protein. “These studies furnish clear-cut evidence that improper nutrition lowers the resistance of the animal to infection," the authors state, "and also that the nutritional deficiency does not have to be so severe as to produce outstanding evidence of disease." In the second chapter, “Better Nutrition as a Health Measure," Dr. McCollum discusses the specific roles of vitamins A, C, and D in the body and in dental health in particular. Reprint 115, 1939.
Nutritional Aspect of Dental Disease
By John H. Gunter, DDS, MD
Summary: This document is a forerunner of holistic dentistry. Physician and dentist Dr. John Gunter explains in detail why "dental practice is intimately associated with the practice of nutrition." While most people today, including most dentists, believe tooth decay is a result of bacterial attack on helpless teeth, the truth is that a well-defended tooth, made strong by sufficient nutrition, is impervious to such attack. Carbohydrates, Dr. Gunter shows, form the diet that is universally associated with tooth decay. Carnivorous humans and animals are free from cavities. Gunter outlines a systemic approach to dentistry based on a vitamin-rich diet that confers dental and systemic immunity. From Philadelphia Medicine. Reprint 115A, 1942.
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The Physiology of Vitamins A and E
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this article from the Central Florida Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Lee gives the background and clinical applications of natural vitamins A and E. Far from the simplistic and deficient modern description of these vitamins as antioxidants, Lee describes the active and vital role each of these fat-soluble vitamin plays in maintaining and healing tissue. Reprint 16, 1946.
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The Primary Cause of Disease
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee lays out a basic principle of his nutritional philosophy—the idea that bacterial infection is usually a secondary result of malnutrition. Properly nourished bodies, naturally stronger and well defended, are much better equipped to resist invasion of pathogens, which are always around us, Lee explains. A weaker, malnourished body, on the other hand, is much more susceptible to a successful attack by foreign invaders. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.
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Quotations on Vitamins from the 1939 USDA Yearbook
By the United States Department of Agriculture
Summary: Excerpts from one of the most quotable government documents ever published. In the 1930s, even as the FDA was harassing doctors and companies promoting nutritional therapy, the USDA published independent studies demonstrating the widespread effects of vitamin malnutrition in the American public (proving that not everyone in the department was asleep at the switch as America's food supply became adulterated, refined, and chemicalized). The USDA Yearbook for 1939 was such a surprisingly candid assessment of nutritional deficiencies in the country that the Lee Foundation published and distributed highlights from it in the form of the booklet shown here. If the statements in the USDA's yearbook had been published by supplement companies, the FDA would have brought legal actions. Unsurprisingly, reports like this stopped coming out of the USDA in subsequent years. From The United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook for 1939.
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The Scope of Vitamin E
By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research
Summary: A 19-page booklet produced by the Lee Foundation reporting on the history and clinical applications of natural vitamin E. This is one of the most complete and concise reports on perhaps the most misunderstood vitamin complex: "Four vitamin factors have been isolated in the course of time from the E complex—alpha, beta, gamma and delta tocopherol. Of these, the alpha form has been found the most powerful and is often erroneously considered as the whole vitamin E. Actually the term 'vitamin E' should only be used in reference to the element which occurs in foods [since] in its entirety it includes factors not present in alpha tocopherol alone." In fact, the report concludes, the natural vitamin E complex is "highly intricate, perhaps the most intricate of all [the] complexes" and the four tocopherols should be regarded merely "as factors and not as the entire E complex." Much of the information in this critical document is completely lost to modern nutrition. 1955.
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Scurvy and Intervertebral Disc Lesions
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: In this remarkable article, Canadian physician W.J. McCormick presents physiological and biochemical principles that go to the core of orthopedic medicine, chiropractic spinal care, and osteopathy. While many health experts fail to understand the ultimate cause of connective tissue decay, McCormick is clear: "The most definitely established physiological function of vitamin C is that of assisting in the formation of collagen for the maintenance of stability and elasticity of connective tissues generally, and this would include the bones, cartilages, muscles and vascular tissues, in fact all tissues of mesenchymal origin. In deficiency of the vitamin, instability and fragility of all such tissues is believed to be caused by the breakdown of 'the intercellular cement substance' (collagen), resulting in easy rupture of any and all of these connective tissues, which would include the intervertebral discs." As Dr. McCormick emphasized throughout his life, the effects of subclinical scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) cannot be understated, though they are often overlooked. From the Archives of Pediatrics. Reprint 5D, 1954.
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Simple Lingual Ascorbic Acid Test
By W. M. Ringsdorf, Jr., DMD, and Dr. E. Cheraskin, MD, DMD
Summary: Dr. Royal Lee and other early nutritionists maintained that ascorbic acid is only one of the many components constituting the natural vitamin C complex—and not necessarily the functional one at that. On the other hand, ascorbic acid serves as useful biomarker for determining the level of vitamin C complex in the body. Acknowledging that subclinical vitamin C deficiency is common, the authors outline a fast and inexpensive method of determining plasma and intradermal levels of vitamin C in an individual. Originally published by the American Academy of General Practice. Reprint 124, 1962.
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Some Interrelations Between Vitamins and Hormones
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee, citing the great British doctor and nutrition pioneer Sir Robert McCarrison, explains the critical connection between nutrition and the endocrine system. "McCarrison back in 1921 told us how the endocrine glands were the first structures to atrophy or degenerate following vitamin and mineral deficiencies. [For instance,] the adrenal glands...stopped functioning and soon became atrophied." McCarrison noted that while the adrenals were usually the first endocrine gland to falter as a result of nutrient deficiency, in time others followed, including the thyroid and the pituitary. As Lee often pointed out, none of this would have been discovered had diets high in nutrient-deficient processed foods not initiated such problems in the human race. 1950.
The Special Nutritional Qualities of Natural Foods
By Dr. Royal Lee and Jerome S. Stolzoff
Summary: In this famous report, Lee and Stolzoff contrast the characteristics of real food with those of their crude artificial imitations. “Because of the denaturation of foods by refining and processing, we are overeating the fattening and energy-producing components in foods and literally starving for the vital vitamin and mineral factors, which have become far scarcer and more difficult to obtain than at any time in the history of the human race.” Still ahead of the times, this report is as important now as it was in its day. Includes a referenced chart of 147 diseases associated with various vitamin defeciences. 1942.
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Studies in Deficiency Disease
By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD
Summary: The complete classic of 1921, as republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1945. Dr. McCarrison was knighted in England for his groundbreaking research while serving as a British army surgeon in India during the first two decades of the twentieth century. His landmark investigations into the connection between the diets of various populations in India and their patterns of disease and health gave new insight into the cause and effect of nutrition on health and introduced the world to the amazingly healthy and long-lived Hunza people of the Himalayas. McCarrison set up laboratories in which he studied the effect of various local diets on animals, reproducing nearly the same health and disease patterns in the animals as displayed in the particular populations. Diet, he concluded, was the determining factor in the specific health patterns of each population. McCarrison was also the first researcher to inform the medical world that the endocrine system is the first system in the body to succumb to the effects of malnutrition, carefully demonstrating the lesions in the endocrine glands caused by specific adulterated foods. His work inspired the likes of Royal Lee, Weston A. Price, Francis Pottenger, Jr., and J. I. Rodale. Still remarkably relevant today, this book should be part of the corpus of all colleges of the healing arts. Originally published by Oxford Medical Publications, 1921.
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Studies of Vitamin Deficiency
By M. K. Horwitt et al.
Summary: Report of a controlled study conducted in a state hospital testing the effects of diets deficient in thiamine and riboflavin. Of course this kind of test could never be conducted under today's ethical standards; nevertheless, as expected, those who were starved of various vitamins suffered noticeable effects and recovered when they were restored to a proper diet. From Science. Reprint 26, 1946.
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The Trace Elements (3 Articles)
By Warren L. Anderson
Summary: An early report on the important effects of trace minerals in soil, livestock, and humans. At the time of these articles, in 1949, the macro minerals—calcium, phosphorus, and potassium—were fairly well understood in terms of plant growth. On the other hand, the trace minerals, e.g., iodine, zinc, copper, manganese, iron, etc., were poorly understood until research like this began to appear. The role of trace minerals in the formation of nutrients such as cobalt and vitamin B12 had only just been discovered. This knowledgeable author shows the insidious effects and unsuspected diseases in plants, livestock, and humans caused by trace mineral deficiencies. From Hoard's Dairyman magazine. Reprint 71, 1949.
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Trace Elements Experiments Here Turning Up Some Amazing Results
By Tom A. Ellis
Summary: A newspaper account of a gathering of nationally known nutritionists and soil experts discussing the effects of trace-element deficiency on the health of soil, plants, livestock, and humans. Among the scientists attending were Dr. William Albrecht, the soil expert from the University of Missouri who's been called the father of organic farming, and Dr. Francis Pottenger, Jr., whose famous cat-feeding experiments showed conclusively that the effects of malnutrition are passed on to subsequent generations. Several studies are discussed, showing the positive clinical effect of supplying trace elements to livestock and humans deficient in them and suggesting that the true cause of these deficiencies is a lack of trace elements in the soil in which the plants eaten by the animals and humans grew. These early experiments show clearly the critical nutritional role of trace minerals in the cycle of life. From the Springfield Daily News and Reader, Missouri. Reprint 92, 1949.
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The Use of Raw Potatoes
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee discusses the nutritional value of potatoes, explaining that much of that value is lost when they are cooked. "We may estimate that 25 percent of the vitamins are lost in cooking either by heat or leaching. The loss of vitamin C is particularly fast...." In addition, he says, "the cooked potato contains no enzymes, as all enzymes are destroyed by heat." One such enzyme, studies showed, helps relieve constipation, while others are even more precious. "One of the enzymes found in raw potatoes is phosphatase, which promotes assimilation of calcium and iron in particular; another is tyrosinase, an essential component of the vitamin C complex and associated directly with the function of the adrenal glands." (Dr. Lee often referred to raw potatoes and raw mushrooms as the best food sources of tyrosinase available.) Lee gives tips on conserving potatoes' nutrients when cooking them and instructs readers to be sure to add lemon juice to freshly extracted potato juice, which keeps the juice from oxidizing and turning black. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.
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Vitamin B Complex and the Weak Heart
By William Brady, MD
Summary: Dr. Brady was a medical doctor who wrote a popular syndicated newspaper column in the 1940s and 50s. In this article, he discusses the importance of the B complex vitamers—specifically thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), and niacinamide (B3)—in the metabolism of carbohydrates as well as to heart health. Vitamin B supplementation had been shown to reduce or eliminate the need for exogenous insulin in some diabetics, Brady notes, and the critical role of the B complex in the functioning of the heart had been revealed all the way back in the 1920s by the famous nutrition pioneer Sir Dr. Robert McCarrison. Astoundingly, modern medicine still fails to grasp the significance of Dr. McCarrison's findings. From the Waterloo Daily Courier, Iowa, 1947.
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Vitamin E for Heart Disease
By J. D. Ratcliff
Summary: Article excerpt. A good historical overview of the facts known about vitamin E. Covers the original researchers and the medical work of the Shute brothers of Canada. Discussion includes the wholesale destruction of naturally occurring vitamins in the modern diet. From Coronet magazine. Reprint 40, 1948.
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Vitamin E vs. Wheat Germ Oil
By Ezra Levin
Summary: The author of this report founded Viobin Corp, which developed wheat germ oil concentration methods. Fully referenced, the article declares that there is far more to wheat germ oil than alpha-tocopherol and that the effect delivered by natural vitamin E depends on much more than the isolated tocopherol. For instance, Levin writes, "It appears that, for the first time, evidence has been presented of the presence in wheat germ oil of a factor that exerts a beneficial effect in neuromuscular disturbances other than vitamin E [i.e., tocopherol]." Levin's claims support Dr. Royal Lee's contention that vitamins are synergistically combined complexes and not isolated chemicals. "For many years," he adds, "we, in our laboratory, have suggested that research workers in reporting their work make a sharp distinction between vitamin E [tocopherol] and wheat germ oil. [The neuromuscular study] makes such differentiation imperative." From the American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Reprint 9, 1944.
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Vitamin E: Vitamins in Medicine
By Franklin Bicknell, MD, and Frederick Prescott, PhD
Summary: A few pages about vitamin E from the classic text The Vitamins in Medicine. This authoritative book, which featured over 4500 references, was originally published in 1942, and in 1953 the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research published its third edition. In this excerpt, Bicknell and Prescott give some critical information not generally known about vitamin E. For instance, while chemists long ago declared vitamin E to be the single compound alpha-tocopherol, the authors, like Dr. Lee and many of the other early nutritionists, thought differently: "While alpha-tocopherol means one distinct substance," they write, "vitamin E may mean either alpha-tocopherol or a mixture of this and other similar substances." Other gems about vitamin E are packed into these few pages, which go a long way to combat the poor level of understanding of nutrition's "most misunderstood vitamin." From The Vitamins in Medicine, 1953.
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Vitamin F & Carbamide in Calcium Metabolism
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: An important article about two of the most overlooked nutritionally and biochemically essential substances in the human body. The roles of carbamide (a.k.a. urea) in denaturing proteins—and thus reducing their antigenicity—and of vitamin F (fatty acid complex) in defusing calcium bicarbonate (ionized calcium) into the cell fluids are virtually lost on orthodox medicine. Yet holistic doctors have repeatedly discovered this article since its publication in 1946 and been amazed at the clinical efficacy of the applied knowledge it presents. From Journal of the National Medical Society. Reprint 20, 1946.
Vitamin F and Weston Price's X Factor
By Dr. Royal Lee with commentary by Mark R. Anderson
Summary: In the 1930s, Dr. Weston Price traveled the globe to study the diets of traditional societies that had yet to start eating modern, processed foods or were in the beginning stages of incorporating them into their culture. Among the many profound nutritional discoveries he made (which he published in his seminal book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration) was the existence of a critical fat-soluble nutrient that was responsible for, among other things, moving calcium from the blood into the tissues, including the bones and teeth. Price was able to measure the effects of this "vitamin-like activator" but was never able to precisely identify its chemical structure. According to nutrition educator and historian Mark R. Anderson, Dr. Royal Lee believed Price's X factor to be a component of Vitamin F, a complex that includes the essential fatty acids. "Dr. Lee was never under any cloud of mystery when it came to the 'X Factor,'" Anderson says. In fact, he adds, Lee considered Price's X Factor to be so important that he included it in three of his famous therapeutic food formulas—Cataplex F tablets, Cataplex F perles, and Super EFF. In these excerpts, Dr. Lee discusses the relationship between the vitamin F complex and Price's discovery.
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Vitamin F in the Treatment of Prostatic Hypertrophy
By James Pirie Hart and William LeGrande Cooper, MD
Summary: One of the most sought after documents ever produced by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. This is a clinical study on the effect of vitamin F in reversing prostate enlargment, complete with blood work, charts of outcomes, and excellent references. "For a considerable time we have been using an oral vitamin F complex preparation for the control of the common cold," the authors explain. "This treatment has been used quite successfully in Europe for several years. During the courses of treatment with this preparation it was noticed that in certain male patients who were being treated concurrently for prostatic hypertrophy, there was a sudden notable decrease in the palpable size and consistency of the prostate gland." Along with this reduction in size and symptoms of prostatic hypertrophy, subjects experienced an average increase in blood iodine levels of 307% and an average increase of blood phosphorous of 8.3%. Tissue calcium also increased as blood calcium decreased by 11% on average. The authors conclude, "The principles of vitamin F therapy in prostatic hypertrophy were demonstrated subjectively and objectively through diminished residual urine, reduction of size of prostate, disappearance of pain and discomfort, reduction of nocturia, and marked increase in sexual libido." 1941.
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Vitamin P Group of the C Complex
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this extensively referenced article, Dr. Lee shows that the natural vitamin C complex is more than just ascorbic acid, in this case discussing the important part of the complex known as the vitamin P group (which includes rutin and other bioflavonoids). For decades, Lee and others knew that focusing on just ascorbic acid led to an incomplete understanding of the function of vitamin C, just as using only ascorbic acid in clinical studies had failed to bring complete systemic relief to scurvy. This scientific explanation of the complete vitamin C complex should serve as a cornerstone for approaching the subject of vitamins in general and vitamin C in particular. From Vitamin News, 1948.
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Vitamin U Therapy of Peptic Ulcer
By Garnett Cheney, MD
Summary: While it was never accepted as a vitamin by the FDA, "vitamin U" from raw cabbage juice was successfully used by pioneering holistic physicians in the treatment of stomach ulcers. Here Dr. Cheney gives some background and clinical applications of this officially unaccepted vitamin in a presentation before the 80th Annual Session of the California Medical Association in 1951. This file includes a supplementary document from a 1957 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association on the subject of cabbage juice for digestive problems. From California Medicine. Reprint 91, 1952.
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Vitamins and Their Clinical Applications
By Dr. W. Stepp, Dr. Kuhnau, and Dr. H. Schroeder
Summary: An extremely rare, comprehensive book on vitamin therapy that Dr. Royal Lee had translated from German and published in the United States. The authors, German research physicians, recognized the therapeutic aspects of vitamins beyond treating the frank deficiency diseases (e.g., scurvy, rickets, etc.) associated with them. "In view of the newly acquired knowledge of the frequency of hypovitaminoses [vitamin deficiencies] and of the susceptibility of patients with avitaminoses to all sorts of diseases [beyond frank deficiencies], the importance of a sufficient vitamin supply must not be underestimated in our patients." This book is an indispensable collection of gems containing some of the lost knowledge of vitamin therapy learned in the years of the twentieth century before World War II, when vitamin research was independent, vigorous, and fresh with the insights of recent discovery. Includes numerous charts, graphs, references, and appendices. 1938.
View PDF: Vitamins and Their Clinical Applications
Vitamins and Their Relation to Deficiency Disease of the GI Tract
By Edward A. Johnston, MD
Summary: This excellent report, a reprint from The Journal of the American College of Proctology, starts with a clear description of the all-important connection between vitamin complexes (as they are found in whole foods) and the endocrine system. "When we consider that vitamins in the food are the substances with which the endocrines are able to secrete their active principles, it is apparent that a glandular insufficiency may take place in the absence of vitamins....All of the ductless glands, the thyroid, para-thyroid, thymus, pineal body, pituitary, adrenals, gonads, pancreas, islets of Langerhans, and spleen must have one or more of the vitamins in order to secrete their vital fluids, and, if deprived of the vitamins, will atrophy and cease to function." Such events, Dr. Johnston says, are obviously bound to weaken the body and make it more susceptible to disease. "Stomach ulcers are probably the best instance of bacterial invasion primarily due to a lowered resistance resulting from a vitamin deficiency. Other instances of vitamin A deficiency, and often found in conjunction with infections of the intestinal tract, are infections of the eyes, tonsils, sinuses, lungs, buccal and lingual mucosa, and the skin." This is the Royal Lee Philosophy writ large. Reprint 2, circa 1940.
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Vitamins In Our Food
By Prof. A. E. Murneek
Summary: In this article from Science magazine, Professor Murneek laments the various factors that have resulted in the "devitaminization" of the modern food supply. "Improper selection of food-producing plants, modern methods of handling the crop, and faulty preparation by cooking and other means has resulted in a diet of subnormal vitamin content for many people," he writes, adding that refining and processing of foods have "devitaminized our foods still further." If consumers truly want good health, Murneek says, they must learn to choose quality over looks or convenience when it comes to food. "By catering to the 'eye-appeal' we have, in our choice, often lost 'food value,' including undoubtedly a large amount of vitamins, both known and unknown." He reminds readers that the food manufacturers do not have their health in mind. "Profit has been often the motivating force in present food technology, the dollar sign the guiding star, setting styles, fostering sales and creating eating 'habits' for the use, in volume, of certain products....Thus economics and style, not nutrition and health...have guided most parties concerned in food production and distribution." Reprint 36, 1944.
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What Is Wrong with White Bread?
By Philip Harris and Paul Dunbar
Summary: A portfolio of four scientific studies, conducted within the period of 1949 to 1961, on the deadly effects of the deficiency diseases caused by white bread and other foods that have had the vitamin E complex refined out of their structure. A poignant example of how industrial-scale food refinement led to an industrial-scale deficiency in the diet of modern humankind. Various sources. Reprint 137A.
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