MEDICAL RESEARCH

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 110, 7 February 1928, Page 9

MEDICAL RESEARCH

LINKING BRITISH ORGANISATIONS ARTIFICIAL VITAMIN PRODUCTION

London, February 5. Following the steady progress in linking research organisations of Britain with those of the Dominions and India, the Medical Research Council last year extended the process to the colonies, protectorates, and mandated territories It is hoped that the result will be a veritable Imperial Research Service. Commenting on this, the council, in its annual report, points out that there is probably more tuberculosis and measles in the tropics than in England. Those diseases are perhaps better studied overseas than at Home, just as the control of a purely tropical disease may .spring from clues discovered in tlie home of a northern laboratory. It becomes clearer every year that medical science is one and indivisible, whether in temperate or tropical climates. Consequently,, research should be done wherever there is the best opportunity. In response to the request of the Empire Marketing Board, which is financing the work for five years, tlie council has arranged for a comprehensive investigation, under the general directon of Professor Harden, of Lister Institute, into the vitamin content of fruit, vegetables, and dairy products, and the effects of different methods of preservation and transport of them. The council at some length reviews progress towards artificial vitamin production, and points out that the national needs of vitamin A can be met from liver fat, utilised with butter, margarine, and in other ways. Ihe Home supplv can be readily supplemented, if necessary, from Empire produce. It has been found that the vitamin content of fat from imported New Zealand liver is the same as from liver in Home-killed animals.—A.P.A. and “Sun.”