THE PRESENCE OF A GROWTH-PRODUCING SUBSTANCE IN CULTURES OF TYPHOID BACILLI

Abstract

Soon after Funk announced the separation from rice polishings of supposed bases called by him "vitamines,"and Suzuki, Shimamura, and Odake, working in the Orient, published corroborative evidence of the presence of a substance apparently similar to that described by Funk and called by the Japanese investigators "oryzanin,"Edie, Evans, Moore, Simpson, and Webster in England reported the presence of similar bodies in brewer's yeast.Without giving a survey of the development of the study of "vitamines,"we may mention that such workers as Mendel, Osborne, Hopkins, Macallum, Seidell, Williams, and Eddy have confirmed the existence of food accessory substances.which are capable of maintaining and increasing bodily weight and growth.Clinical observers have long recognized that in certain infectious diseases growth is induced, apparently, by the infection.In typhoid fever, for example, the patient may grow from 1 to even several inches in height.Yeasts and bacteria are so low in the zoological scale of life as to be virtually on the same plane; and there is no evident error of logic in inferring that the growth incident to bacillary infections may be due to substances, elaborated by the bacteria, such as the substances known to produce growth, which are elaborated by yeasts.In the present paper we report experiments made to determine this point.43