Aspects of Science (Dantzig, Tobias)

This is a book to be welcomed most cordially. It is timely; its subject matter is of large importance; its authors are outstandingly qualified; and they have written carefully and well. Published as one of the Macmillan Medical Monographs, it is naturally presented primarily from a medical point of view, and the sequence is therefore different from that which a teacher would probably adopt for a class in chemistry. In general arrangement, most of the medical part comes first, then the historical and experimental which includes the accounts of the differentiation, isolation, structure, and synthesis of the substance. Chapters VII, VIII, XVII, XVIII, and XX-XXIV deal largely with the quantitative problems of determination, distribution in foods, requirements in nutrition, and adequacy of dietaries or food supplies. In a foreword Dr. McLester writes that in no other area of medical knowledge has there been recorded such a far-reaching advance as has been made during the past two decades in the field of nutrition; and he adds, "Pointing the way to the development of a healthier, more vigorous race, this advance marks an epoch in man’s progress.” The first six chapters are addressed directly to the physicians, who, it is stated, are beginning to realize that subclinical forms of vitamin Bi deficiency occur frequently, though "the effects of a persistent, slightly faulty diet may not be detectable for years.” Beside faults in the food, there may be disturbances of absorption of the vitamin, or increased need for it in the body. The authors emphasize the view that prolonged inadequacy, either from dietary lack, failure of utilization, or increased demand, produces a variety of borderline states of ill health, which are rarely well defined and rarely the uncomplicated result of shortage of one nutritional factor alone. Hence even though frank cases of beriberi are not common in this country, they hold that cases of suboptimal vitamin Bt hutrition are probably more common than has hitherto been supposed. This point of view leads to very careful considerations of the quantitative questions of adequacy, in both the clinical and the experimental parts of the book.