It has been pointed out that students of normal nutrition failed to make use of the observations of the pathologists during the decade between 1905 and 1915. In discussing the possible explanation of the early failure of their animals fed isolated food-substances, together with "artificial protein-free milk," Osborne and Mendel (13) emphasized the improvement of the latter by the addition of traces of manganese, iodin, fluorin and aluminum, and dwelt upon the possible importance of minor variations in the inorganic moiety of the diet. Even at the end of 1913 (14) in commenting on McCollum's studies of butter fat they stated that "The added butter fat may have simply supplied something analogous to the so-called vitamines, which Funk considers to be essential for life, and thereby enabled the animals to resume growth on a food thus made adequate for maintenance." Further, "It is still rather early to generalize on the role of accessory 'vitamines' when the ideal conditions in respect to the familiar fundamental nutrients and inorganic salts adequate for prolonged maintenance are not completely solved." These quotations will serve to show that these investigators were likewise in the same state of confusion as to the interpretation of the data in the literature of pathology which described the experimental production of beri-beri and of scurvy (15), as were McCollum and his co-workers. At the time Hopkins published his proof of the necessity of certain accessory foodstuffs he apparently was not aware of the epoch-making observations of Eijkman that a diet of polished rice would induce polyneuritis in birds and that the rice polish contained something which would relieve the condition (9).