Vitaminizer & Teeth

Perfection of a machine which adds Vitamin D to m>lk was announced >by the University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation last week. The device consists of a large upright cylinder within which glares a12,000-watt battery of carbon arc lamps. The arcs emit ultraviolet light. The light synthesizes Vitamin D in milk exposed to its irradiation as Wisconsin's Professor Harry Steenbock ; has demonstrated. In operation 3,000 quarts of milk flow in a thin sheet down the inner walls of the cylinder, acquiring Vitamin D in about the same strength as occurs naturally in good cod liver oil. National Carbon Co. of Cleveland and Creamery Package Co. of Chicago worked with the Research Foundation to develop the irradiator. The Foundation is to commercialize it, license its use to dairies, just as it licenses Professor Steenbock's irradiation methods to drug and food manufacturers. The importance of Vitamin D lies in its power to make the body use calcium and phosphorus. The natural source of Vitamin D is the skin when exposed to the ultraviolet rays of sunlight. Civilized people living in northern latitudes get insufficient sunlight, hence insufficient Vitamin D. The deficiency shows up in the bones as rickets, in the teeth as decay. Primitive northern people, the Eskimo's, suffer very little from rickets or caries. They get their Vitamin D from the great quantities of fish which they eat. Fish oils contain abundant quantities of Vitamin D (TIME. Dec. 12). "None of the usual foods supply enough of Vitamin D," says Johns Hopkins' Professor Elmer Verner McCollum. who in 1922 announced the existence and vital importance of this vitamin.

Professor McCollum, 53, a big, sleepy-eyed, slow-talking savant, went to Manhattan last week to confirm an important discovery about decayed teeth. Dr. R. Gordon Agnew, pathologist, and Mrs. Agnew, nutritionist, had observed that the filthy-mouthed Chinese and Tibetans at West China Union University. Cheng--tu. Szechwan Province, where they teach, had sound teeth under crusts of tartar. The Agnews examined native foods, reasoned that phosphorus and sunlight were the essential preventives of tooth decay. They took leaves of absence from West China Union University to prove their theory on rats at the University of Toronto, their alma mater. Last week they were in Manhattan to tell missionaries, doctors and dentists that they have been able to produce or prevent tooth decay at will in practically any rat, by regulating the amount of phosphorus and Vitamin D in the diet. Now they are confirming their work on 450 Ontario children. The children get their phosphorus, vitamin and calcium, which they also require, in milk, fresh vegetables, fish oils, irradiated foods.

The Agnews, said Professor McCollum, have shown "that dental caries can be largely, perhaps wholly prevented by correct eating. . . . The Agnew work, as well as other research on this subject. now enables us to dispose of certain misconceptions which have been more or less widely held in the past. The popular belief that tooth decay is due to impaction and fermentation of food within the fissures of the teeth, causing dissolution of the enamel, is doubtless true in certain cases. Mouth hygiene demands brushing the teeth. We will probably never be able to do without a toothbrush." Another point: "Teeth thoroughly washed by saliva tend to have the lowest susceptibility to decay." Proof: People who habitually lie on the same side in sleep have less decay in teeth on the pillow side.

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