Vitamin Debunker

To the earnest Brooklyn physicians who invited him to tell them about vitamins last week, Johns Hopkins' Nutritionist Elmer Verner McCollum was a demigod who enabled doctors and druggists to profit from the vitamin business. When he finished speaking they beamed less amiably at him. For Dr. McCollum debunked some of the claims made for some of the vitamins.

Vitamin A, of which he was one of the discoverers, received his specific denunciation. It does help the body of children to grow. It does help prevent eye diseases. But, said Dr. McCollum, Vitamin A does not directly prevent colds as many manufacturers of candies and drugs claim. The only effect Vitamin A has on colds is to increase secretions from mucous membranes of nose and throat. Those secretions kill invading germs, may prevent a cold, if germs actually cause colds. His advice was not to drink cod-liver oil, in which Vitamin A is usually sold, as a cold-preventive.

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