In Stockholm last week a committee of
Swedish doctors was deciding whether to give the 1937 Nobel Prize
for Medicine to: 1> Biochemist Ibert Szent-Gyrgyi of the
Hungarian University of Szeged who discovered that a certain acid
in the adrenal glands of healthy men and animals had the
same beneficial effect as Vitamin C contained in oranges and lemons; 2>
Biochemist Walter Norman Haworth of Birmingham University,
who analyzed the chemical structures of Vitamin C and the ascorbic acid
which Professor Szent-Gyrgyi isolated; or 3> Biochemist Paul Karrer
of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who made Vitamin C
artificially. While the world of scholars waited, the Nobel Prize committee took a
quick last look at the accomplishments of Albert Szent-Gyrgyi. Amiable
son of a once wealthy Hungarian, son-in-law of a one-time Hungarian
postmaster general, as thoroughly Hungarian as paprika, this Wartime
Hungarian army medical officer started, after the Armistice, to learn
what happens to food in the human body. He was particularly interested
in the progress of carbohydrates . These enter
the mouth, change into a variety of transient substances, nourish every
cell in the body, leave the body with the breath as simple carbon
dioxide gas and water vapor. In his studies Dr. Szent-Gyrgyi found that the adrenal glands secrete a
substance, ascorbic acid, which he subsequently discovered to be the
same thing as Vitamin C. To further these studies, Dr, Szent-Gyrgyi
needed large quantities of ascorbic acid, and his pursuit of it took
him to a half-dozen European universities and the Mayo Clinic at
Rochester, Minn, where Dr. Edward Calvin Kendall, isolator of thyroid
hormone and analyzer of adrenal cortex hormone, provided him with a big
stock of adrenals fresh from South St. Paul stockyards. He still was
not able to get enough to permit all the experiments he wanted to do on
the acid's medical effects, and in despair Dr. Szent-Gyrgyi went back
to his native Hungary where one day, instead of eating a dish which
Mrs. Szent-Gyrgyi had heavily spiced with paprika, he made a chemical
analysis of that sweet pepper. In his own backyard this far-traveling
researcher found that paprika was the best source of Vitamin C on
earth. Dr. Szent-Gyrgyi later found, along with Vitamin C in fruit juices and
adrenals, a “permeability factor” which he calls Vitamin P, not
present in synthesized C. Vitamin P keeps the walls of body cells in
good condition. Without both, a person develops pyorrhea and scurvy. He
bleeds easily, may be subject to certain virus and bacterial diseases.
With an ample supply of these vitamins, he can overcome such
ailments. Although Hungarian pepper is the most abundant source of
these vitamins, this condiment is little known in the U. S. Most
convenient source of the vitamins thus remain the citrus fruits,
especially lemons and oranges.
