Vitiated Vitality

Under austerity and Socialism, Britons have been getting their pep and stamina less & less from good old-fashioned beefsteak, more & more from vitamin pills. Last week it seemed as if even their vitamins were letting them down.

This unpleasant news was first uncovered last spring when Birmingham's city analyst, armed with a new $1,400 spectro-photometer,* began testing vitamin products taken from the shelves of Birmingham pharmacies. His report: 42% of the samples "advertised as containing specified amounts of vitamin A" were no good. In some shops, he found vitamin stocks that were 17 years old. In other cases vitamins had lost their punch through being exposed to the sun in window displays, or through being kept in humid closets and drawers.

Last week British drug manufacturers began withdrawing vitamin stocks worth-tens of thousands of dollars from stores all over Britain. Customers besieged druggists with half-consumed bottles of oil and pills, most of them bought with the taxpayers' money by Britain's National Health Service, demanding fresh merchandise. Said one Coventry vitamin votary: "I've suspected all along these pills were no good. Why, three of us came down with flu last winter."

* An instrument which shines a white light through a substance, usually in solution, and measures the light waves absorbed by it. By studying the "absorption pattern," chemists can detect the presence or absence of certain compounds, including many vitamins.

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