The observing reader cannot miss the fact that in all books and articles dealing with vitamins, commercial products are emphasized and foods as sources of vitamins are slighted. Yeast, cod-liver oil, halibut-liver oil, shark-liver oil, Black Strap Molasses, and other food extracts, even synthetic "vitamins" are recommended, even insisted upon, instead of natural foods. Indeed natural foods are often pictured as indigestible, even dangerous. Our efforts to get vitamins and organic salts the "easy way" has led to many foolish practices.

Prof. E. V. McCullum says: "An examination of the labels on the containers of the vitamin preparations which we have studied suggests at once their promotion for therapeutic purposes represents a repetition of the 'patent medicine' propaganda which has for so long been inflicted on the American public. Thus the same general symptoms that have been used in labels of sarsparillas, blood-purifiers, kidney remedise, remedies for female weakness, etc., reappear as conditions for which the vitamin preparations are said to be specific remedies.

"The claims set forth on the labels, of the medicinal value of these preparations are extravangant and misleading. They do not contain the vitamin 'B' in concentrated form, as they are represented to do. The marketing of the preparations represents an attempt and unfortunately, a successful one, to substitute a commercial vitamin propaganda for the nefarious patent medicine business."

Prof. Casimir Funk says: "Science is very much in the dark yet as to the composition and function of vitamins. The combined research has taught us that all we do know about the subject is of tremendous importance. But it is not detracting from the valuable place that vitamins hold in the list of food elements to say that we are just beginning to understand them a little.

"Reputable scientists do not countenance the efforts that are being made to deceive the public into believing that the time has come when it can be said satisfactorily that such and such a result will follow the practice of taking certain proprietary vitamin preparations.

"To put it briefly, the people who are promoting such preparations do not know what they are talking about. And they certainly are leading the public into deception. If their claims for these products could be substantiated, science would greet them with open arms. There are several hundred scientists experimenting, but, as yet, vitamins have not been isolated, much less concentrated.

"Besides, vitamins so far have proved of value only where there have been cases of very distinct vitamin deficiency. When the diet is complete, we do not yet know whether an additional supply of vitamins is needed or even advisable. No one has established the quantity of vitamins necessary for the maintenance of the average healthy person. (Since Prof. Funk made these statements, some experimenters claim to have demonstrated that an excess of vitamins is harmful.)

"There is nothing mysterious about vitamins. They are just food constituents that should be in our diet, just as other food properties should be found there.

"I do not know what use, particular or otherwise, will be made of isolating vitamins when we have succeeded in separating them. I could not even venture a guess--no one can know. I confidently predict that the time will come eventually when we shall succeed in such isolation. But no one has succeeded in doing it yet.

"What would be the use in preparing all our foods artificially, so long as nature is producing her own foods with sufficient abundance to supply an increasing population? It would be folly even to think of turning ourselves into domestic manufacturers and consumers of self-made food so long as nature gives us enough."

McCullum reported tests made with six widely advertised nostrums supposed to carry large percentages of vitamins, the test showing them to be not only worthless, but injurious. "Fed to test groups of rats and other animals," he says, "not only was growth most positively not promoted, but was checked, halted and inhibited. Continuous feeding resulted in the death of the animals subjected to the test." Other investigators making similar tests with widely advertised vitamin carrying patent foods, etc., agree with McCullum's finding. Our safest and most dependable source of vitamins, as of salts and other food elements, is the plant kingdom--fresh fruits, green vegetables and nuts.

It is true that the above quoted statements were made a few years ago, but the essential facts have not changed. Vitamins work best in cooperation; cooperation, not alone with each other, but also with the other nutrients in the diet.

Nature puts up her foods in complete ensembles and our efforts to separate the various food elements and put them up in bottles and boxes have not been very successful. Science is better at building bridges or tunnels than at building men. In this latter we must still follow the ancient, the primitive, pattern.