A Contribution to the History of Chinese Dietetics

M t /[ ODERN knowledge of nutrition and disease has brought the realisation that vitamins are essentials of a complete diet as much as the proteins, carbohydrates and fats, and that each has a function peculiar to itself, being essential for the maintenance of some normal function or functions of the body. Deficiency of any of the vitamins in the diet may result in ill health and even death. The League of Nations formed a special committee for the investigation of such problems, and its work is now continued by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Considerable progress has been made each year though it is to be admitted that our approach is still somewhat slow in view of the importance of dietetics for human welfare. Nevertheless it is a striking fact in the history of science that the first pioneer of vitamin studies, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, has lived to see the establishment of the chemical constitution, and even the synthesis, of many of the most important vitamins. The present contribution arises from the fact that one of us (G.D.L.), while engaged in experimental work I on the physiology of vitamin B1, became interested in the question of the antiquity of human knowledge of beri-beri as a deficiency disease. Such knowledge has certainly existed at least since the 5th century A.D. in China, as may be found from writings of that period which we possess. The fact that the Chinese knowledge of dietetics has been so largely overlooked is due partly to the lack of any proper index to Chinese literature, and partly to the extreme divergence of the Chinese language from Western alphabetical languages, which has sealed off the history of thought and knowledge in China from the scholars of the west. Even the standard history of Chinese medicine, however, (Wong & Wu) has practically nothing to say regarding Chinese dietetics. A detailed review of the development of our present knowledge of nutrition and disease which led in the end to the discovery of vitamin B1 and its relation to the disease beri-beri would of course include an account of the isolation of the vitamin in crystalline form, the various theories proposed to account for its action, its role in cell oxidations, etc. But we shall simply refer the reader to reviews (Peters; Harris; Williams & Spies). By the end of the last century, it was clear that diseases like scurvy, beri-beri and rickets, could be cured empirically by the addition of suitable foods to the diet, although there was no knowledge of the chemistry or the nature of the deficient substances. In connection with beri-beri, a disease which we now know to be due to vitamin Bldeficiency, Harris writes: