Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189

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Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological andBiomedical Sciences

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The emergence of vitamins as bio-political objects during World War I

Robyn Smith 1

Department III: Experimental Systems and Spaces of Knowledge, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 14 May 2008Received in revised form 23 February 2009

Keywords:VitaminsScientific objectsBio-politicsWorld War I

1369-8486/$ - see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2009.06.006

E-mail address: robyn4@ualberta.ca1 Present address: Department of Sociology, 5–21 To2 Scurvy is due to a lack of vitamin C in the diet and

gums, bleeding under the skin and pain in the joints. Scproblem persists because doctors no longer think to lo

3 Rickets is a weakening of the bones due to a lack o4 Beriberi is a disease of the nervous system caused

can’t I can’t’ in Sihala, the most common language spokalso known as Reisesserkrankheit.

a b s t r a c t

Biochemists investigating the problem of the vitamins in the early years of the twentieth century wereworking without an object, as such. Although they had developed a fairly elaborate idea of the characterof the ‘vitamine’ and its role in metabolism, vitamins were not yet biochemical objects, but rather ‘func-tional ascriptions’ and ‘explanatory devices’. I suggest that an early instance of the changing status of theobject of the ‘vitamins’ can be found in their stabilization, through the course of World War I, as bio-politicalobjects for the British and Allied war effort. Vitamins emerged as players, active agents, in Britain’s wartimebio-political problems of food distribution and population health and because of this they became increas-ingly real as bio-political objects, even prior to their isolation as bio-chemical molecules. I suggest that themateriality of our biology has agency in the development of political regimes and schemes.

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1. Introduction

Despite the practical knowledge throughout the nineteenthcentury that citrus fruit prevented and cured scurvy,2 and that rick-ets3 and beriberi4 were diseases caused by poor diet, it was not until1906 that animal feeding experiments led investigators to proposethe existence of ‘accessory food factors’, a lack of which was deter-mined to be the cause of some illnesses (Carpenter, 2000; Carter,1977, pp. 119–120; Follis, 1960, p. 291; Hopkins, 1949; Ihde & Beck-er, 1971; Teich, 1995; Wolf & Carpenter, 2003, p. 3023). Accessoryfood factors as objects of study emerged from studies of metabolismand protein chemistry, as well as what might be called the ‘clinical’element of the research environment (Follis, 1960, p. 291, 316). Instudies of structural chemistry and calorimetry, scientists depended

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ry Building, University of Alberta, Eleads to abnormal tissue metabolismurvy is remarkably common amongok for it.f vitamin D, which is essential to c

by a lack of vitamin B in the diet. Inen in Sri Lanka, where the problem

upon the use of animal feeding experiments. These researchers werecompelled to notice that their animals frequently died or developeddiseases through the course of the experiments. In particular theiranimals developed diseases similar to some diseases seen amongsthuman populations.

By the close of 1913 two American laboratories had determinedthat there was indeed present in food at least one ‘accessory foodfactor’ or ‘vitamine’ as it was being called increasingly and that itwas an organic catalyst, which served a regulatory function inmetabolism. It was also known that vitamins could be attainedfrom various food sources. During the course of the time I considerhere, namely the years between 1911 and 1917, these substances,a lack of which caused disease and failure of growth, were called‘vitamines’ indicating with ‘vita’ that the substance was vital and

dmonton, AB T6G 2H4, Canada.(Follis, 1960, p. 303). Early signs of scurvy include anemia, loose teeth and bleeding

st youth in North America who do not consume sufficient vitamin C in their diets. The

alcium absorption (ibid.).most Western European languages the disease is known as Beriberi, which means, ‘Iplagued the people and colonial governments for centuries. In German the disease is

180 R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189

with ‘amine’ that the substance had a nitrogenous base.5 Further,during this time, it was also increasingly accepted that there wasmore than one, perhaps as many as three distinct vitamins (Follis,1960, p. 307; Teich, 1995, p. 223). Although scientists had developeda fairly elaborate idea of the character of the vitamin and its role inmetabolism, those who were investigating the problem were work-ing without an object, as such.

The historian of biochemistry, Harmke Kamminga, has sug-gested that, ‘the making of the vitamin concept in the first few dec-ades of [the twentieth] century relied heavily on functionalascriptions, centred on the role of specific, but chemically ill-de-fined nutrients in preventing specific dietary deficiency diseases’and that until the 1920s, when the first vitamin molecules wereisolated, the vitamins were ‘explanatory devices’ (Kamminga,1998, p. 83). Kamminga’s suggestion is certainly accurate and I willdeploy it here for my purposes. However, I also mean to go beyondKamminga, to suggest how changes in the object status of the vita-mins were effected from outside the domain of scientific researchand laboratory activity. Thus mine is a contribution to the study of‘how scientific theories and investigations of nutrition have madetheir impact on a whole range of human practices and ideologies,and how these in turn have fed into the priorities and practicesof the science of nutrition’ (Kamminga & Cunningham, 1995, p. 1).

In this paper I suggest that an early instance of the changing sta-tus of the object of the ‘vitamins’ can be found in their stabilization,through the course of World War I, as bio-political objects for theBritish and Allied war effort. I do not mean to suggest that this isthe single moment when vitamins are fully emergent or stabilizedas scientific, bio-political, epistemic or chemical objects. It took anexceptionally long time for the scientific community to agree onthe existence of vitamins and their role in nutrition. Rather, I meanto show that the period I am discussing was one instance in theprocess by which the vitamins were stabilized as scientific andbio-political objects. Vitamins emerged as players, active agents,in Britain’s wartime bio-political problems of food distributionand population health and because of this they became increas-ingly real as bio-political objects, even prior to their isolation asbio-chemical molecules.

Insofar as the vitamins lent their potential as scientific objectsto the political situation, the political situation lent the vitaminsincreasing stability as objects. Biochemists at the time suspectedand hoped that the vitamins could have practical benefits and theirhope that vitamins would provide some relief to wartime problemspoints to the potential of the vitamins as scientific objects. Thishope lent momentum and stability to the vitamins and allowedthem to begin to function as tools in solving problems of wartimedeficiency diseases and food distribution (Rheinberger, 2000, p.271). At the moment that they became useful to bio-politics, thevitamins became objects with which to generate the future andas such they entered more fully into the realm of the scientific real(ibid., p. 275). In their oscillation between biopolitics and science,the vitamins’ ontological stability increased, even as it was a func-tion of their persistent potential as objects of investigation, as sci-entific objects with the power to manifest unknown futures.

If we see during the course of the war that the vitamins oscil-lated between being objects of biological investigation and increas-ingly stable bio-political objects, so too does my point in this paperoscillate between two states. First and most apparently I mean to

5 There were various arguments for keeping, abandoning and modifying the name. The cvitamins did have a nitrogenous base and scientists felt the suffix tied vitamin science to‘advitat’. Vitamin, without the ‘e’, was finally accepted. Although the name vitamine did nvitamine, simply to avoid confusion.

6 At the beginning of the twentieth century Britain was losing its grip on its status asindustrial and military leader and to remain one of the world’s great powers, British politiciapproach to vitamin scientists can be seen in this light (Searle, 1971, p. 9).

suggest that the materiality of our biology has agency in the devel-opment of political regimes and schemes. Despite recent Foucaul-dian investigations of the place of ‘the body’ in bio-politicalformations and despite analyses within the history of science andsocial studies of science of the ways in which science is political,there persists a disjuncture in understanding how our biologyhas become entwined with modern bio-politics. It is almost asthough analyses of bio-politics do not really need to account forthe bio, only the politics. However, here I follow recent feminist lit-erature emerging mostly from Australia that suggests that themicrostructure of our bodies contributes to the action commonlyattributed to culture, sociality and signification (Kirby, 1999,2008; Roberts, 1999; Wilson, 1999, 2004, 2008).

My point is, secondly, to consider the history of the vitamins asbiological objects. Not to consider how biologically the bio-politi-cal develops is in fact to suggest that the biological knowledgedeveloped is apolitical. Following Foucault, I suggest that bio-pol-itics ‘deals with the population . . . as a problem that is at once sci-entific and political’ (Foucault, 2003, p. 245). If the biological is notinvolved in rendering the bio-political, bio-politics may as well becharacterized as the political grasping the simply sitting and wait-ing biological fact that science has revealed. Which, returns us thento the need to account for the biological aspects of the develop-ment of bio-politics.

Foucault suggests that bio-politics are sites where problems ofgovernment emerge as both a ‘biological problem and as power’sproblem’, such as, the problems of wartime food distribution andpopulation health (ibid., p. 245). Bio-political problems, Foucaulttells us, emerge as problems requiring forces of regulation: ‘regula-tory mechanisms must be established to establish an equilibrium,maintain an average, establish a sort of homeostasis, and compen-sate for variations within this general population’ (ibid., p. 246). Isuggest that it was precisely the role of vitamins as ascriptions ofregulatory function that allowed them so effectively and efficientlyto be enrolled in the development of a bio-politics of nutrition. Thevitamins became stabilized as bio-political objects through thecourse of the war insofar as they enabled nation-state and theninternational intervention into biological processes through whichthe human race is connected and problems of the environment asthey are created through the development of a population (ibid., p.245). With the term ‘bio-political’ I mean to encompass govern-mental techniques, projects, strategies and discourses for popula-tion health and governmental projects and strategies that relyupon and use the bodies of its population. I maintain here that,‘the modern nation state has a reciprocal relation with its citizenswith respect to their health and welfare’ (Kamminga & Cunning-ham, 1995, p. 2). In this paper, ‘bio-political’ means both the gov-ernment’s responsibility to secure a food supply and to maintainthe population at a minimum of health and also the government’sneed for both bodies and food on the front line.

The problematization of food as a war concern within the Brit-ish state began late in 1915 and the government only approachedscientific institutions with wartime problems of food and nutrition,beyond the sufficient rationing of troops, in 1916 (Smith, 1997, p.142). When called upon to assist the state in its wartime efforts,biochemists seized the opportunity to increase their knowledgeand understanding of the accessory food factors and the roles thesefood factors play in metabolism (ibid., p. 142).6 Biochemists at the

oncern turned around the suffix ‘amine’ as it became increasingly clear that not all theo close to protein science. Several alternative names were considered: for example,ot change to vitamin until the end of World War I, I will refrain from using the term

a monopolistic great power. As part of British attempts to re-establish itself as anans and bureaucrats exploited new technologies as they were made available and their

R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189 181

Lister Institute in London were particularly active in vitamin re-search both before and during the war. However, the approach tothe problem of the accessory food factors during the war differedfrom that taken prior the war. Prior to the war scientists investigatedthe problem of the vitamins to consider the function of the accessoryfood factors within the metabolism of individual organisms. Duringthe years prior to the war Casimir Funk (1884–1967), then a BeitMemorial Fellow in the Lister’s Biochemistry Department, workedto isolate the vitamin substance thought to be present in rice polish-ings (Ihde & Becker, 1971, p. 1; Wolf & Carpenter, 2003, p. 3023). An-other Beit Memorial Fellow, Evelyn Ashley Cooper (dates unknown)worked, in the years prior to the war, to determine the physiologicalfunction of what was then known to be an anti-neuritic vitamin andalso to determine its distribution in foodstuffs.

With the outbreak of war, knowledge of the regulatory functionof the vitamins was applied to the problems of food supply andpopulation health; the scientists used the regulatory function ofthe vitamins as a tool to make their way through the wartimeproblems of food supply and population health. During the warHarriette Chick (1875–1977) quickly became the foremost vitaminexpert at the Lister Institute. Chick and her fellow Lister Instituteresearchers7 had the regulatory function of the vitamins to aid themin their research and indeed, the vitamins served regulatory func-tions in the research itself, as they served as a kind of magnet direct-ing the approach to problems of food supply and populationnutrition. The set of unknowns did not simply lie scattered at theirfeet, but could be picked up and made to answer to the regulatoryfunction of the vitamins and their capacity to connect the organismvariously and institute new metabolic norms. It was with these func-tions of the accessory food factors that scientists faced the problemspresented to them by the British army at this point and throughoutthe duration of World War I.

Below, I consider the regulatory function of the vitamins in lightof Georges Canguilhem’s concept of normativity and suggest thatbecause they are an external source of regulatory function thatcan be attained from various sources, vitamins are sites that allowus to adjust to changes in our food supply while maintaining ourhealth and wellbeing (Canguilhem, 1991). Although, Canguilhemnever considered the vitamins in his thinking on normativity, I willshow that the vitamins are sites of physiological normative capac-ity and that the vitamins’ regulatory functions were tremendouslyproductive for British scientists in solving problems of wartimefood supply and deficiency diseases. By the end of the war, scien-tists conceived of the vitamins as the capacity within the humanbody to connect up to different and changing food supplies andfood economies. Because of this, even prior to their molecular iso-lation, the vitamins became increasingly stabilized through thewar as bio-political objects. I will suggest throughout that theincreasing stability of the vitamins as bio-political objects throughthe war fed back into the context of laboratory research, makingtheir molecular isolation a research priority in the inter-war years(Kamminga & Cunningham, 1995, p. 11).8 Therefore, I conclude bysuggesting that because they served as normative capacity and reg-ulatory function in problems of population health and the nation’sfood supply, the vitamins were stabilized9 through the war as bio-political objects, despite their continuing status as ‘as yet unknown’biochemical objects.

7 Chick frequently worked with and published with one Margaret Hume (1887–1968).8 This is not to suggest that scientists working on the problem of the vitamins served as a

itself. However, we must understand their articulation of the problem as intertwined with9 Again, this is not to say they were rendered entirely stable, only that they were incre

10 I will use this name, ‘Food (War) Committee’ throughout the text because, although itwas the committee’s actual name.

11 Proteins, carbohydrates and fats were considered the three great classes of food stuffsfeeding experiments revealed the vital nutritional role played by hitherto unsuspected co

In this paper therefore I will first outline the vitamin concept asit was elaborated prior to the War and consider the significance ofthis concept in light of Canguilhem’s concept of ‘normativity.’ Ithen turn my attention to an instance of crisis in the AustralianArmy to which vitamin scientists applied the vitamins and suggestthat the work undertaken by the scientists was no longer investi-gations of the problem of the metabolic function of the vitaminsin individual organisms but became rather, the problem of popula-tion health and food supply under wartime conditions. I then con-sider briefly a moment during the war that does not bear on thehistory of the vitamins, specifically the decision by British analyststo blockade German food supplies and the establishment of theRoyal Society’s ‘Food (War) Committee’ as the forum throughwhich to present this decision.10 This committee, which was formedinitially to present a plan to blockade German food supplies, re-mained standing and was used to solve problems of British and Al-lied food supply for the duration of the war. I dwell on themoment of the Committee’s inception because this instance helpsto illuminate the ways in which the problematization of food duringthe war was not only a matter of health, welfare or well-being butwas caught up in the violence of wartime strategy and planning. Fi-nally then I return to the role of the vitamins in wartime food strat-egies and consider their emergence from the war as bio-politicalobjects that both necessitated and enabled the re-distribution offood supplies around the wartime economy.

2. Accessory food factors in physiology, pre-World War I

Early indications of the existence of what were initially called‘accessory food factors’ that were required for growth and well-being came from feeding experiments with rats designed to testthe quality of various isolated amino acids. In 1906, Frederick Gow-land Hopkins (1861–1947) designed experiments to determine thequalitative value of tryptophan in the diet and found that he couldnot keep his experimental animals alive on rations of purified fats,carbohydrates and proteins and so suggested that there was somesubstance in food other than the known nutrients that was neces-sary to nutrition (Carter, 1977, p. 135; Follis, 1960, p. 312; Ihde &Becker, 1971, p. 1; Kamminga & Cunningham, 1995, p. 10; Smith,1997, p. 143; Teich, 1995, p. 223; Wolf & Carpenter, 2003, p.3023).11 Later, Christian Eijkman (1858–1930) in Java and ThomasOsborne (1859–1929) and Lafayette Mendel (1872–1935) in Amer-ica also speculated from feeding experiments with isolated proteinsthat some substance other than the known proteins, fats and carbo-hydrates was required for growth and well-being in animals (Carter,1977, p. 128; Ihde & Becker, 1971). Further investigations estab-lished that even with an otherwise complete dietary, growth couldnot occur without the presence of these ‘accessory food factors’:

The experiments described in this paper . . . show that a sub-stance or substances present in normal foodstuffs (e.g., milk)can, when added to the dietary in astonishingly small amount,secure the utilization for growth of the protein and energy con-tained in such artificial mixtures. (Hopkins, 1912, p. 425)

In the years before the war, despite efforts by biochemists,investigations into the role of accessory food factors in metabolismwere undertaken without an object. In 1911, it was ‘impossible to

gents of the state. Scientists were compelled, of course, by the problem of the vitaminstheir contemporary political and social context.

asingly stabilized.is a bit awkward with its backwards grammar and its parentheses in the middle, that

from the 1840s until this idea began to break down when ‘more fine-grained animalmponents of the diet’ (Kamminga & Cunningham, 1995, pp. 3, 9).

182 R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189

say anything with regard to [the accessory food factor’s] chemicalnature’ (Funk, 1911b, p. 398). And even after two years of effort, in1913, ‘many points await their solution until a method for deter-mining such small quantities is available. The present inquiryshows that the ordinary chemical methods for estimating vitaminscan hardly suffice’ (Funk, 1913, p. 211). Attempts to isolate the sub-stance had been unsuccessful as the ‘active substance’ could neverbe maintained through the different trials of isolation (Funk,1911b; Cooper, 1912, 1913). The accessory food factors thereforeremained an activity, or a function within experimental biology,rather than yielding an object to biochemical analysis. Scientistsfor the most part therefore concentrated their efforts upon deter-mining the function of the accessory food factors in animal metab-olism and disease prevention and proceeded in their investigationsthrough feeding experiments with live animals such as rats, pi-geons, chickens or guinea pigs. The metabolic functions of theaccessory food factors were manifest in several biological measure-ments such as growth, reproduction and measurements of wellbeing such as energy and appetite levels, behaviour and coatappearance and texture. Typical results might read: ‘An immediatebetterment of the general condition of the animals followed;growth was re-established and the health then maintained’ (Hop-kins & Neville, 1913, p. 98).

Because growth was secured with such small addenda of milk,the accessory food factors were marked as providing metabolicfunctions distinct from the supply of sustenance. The growth se-cured by the presence of the addenda was larger than what couldbe accounted for by the caloric value of the addition. ‘The increasein the velocity of growth due to the milk was out of propor-tion . . . to what could have been accounted for by the plus in intakealone’ (Hopkins, 1912, p. 448). Not only this but an increase in theamount of accessory food factor in the diet had exponentially moreeffect. ‘If the data be examined it will be seen that a given incre-ment of growth is attended with much greater economy whenthe ration of milk is added to the artificial mixture’ (ibid., p. 445).That is, more accessory food factor in the diet secured exponen-tially improved regulatory function and subsequently even greatergrowth, health and wellbeing.12

Thus it was determined that the accessory food factors were notof caloric value in the animals’ diet but that they served some reg-ulatory role in the animals’ metabolism.

It is possible that what is absent from artificial diets and sup-plied in such addenda as milk and tissue extracts is of the nat-ure of an organic complex (or of complexes) which the animalbody cannot synthesise. But the amount which seems sufficientto secure growth is so small that a catalytic or stimulative func-tion seems more likely. (Ibid., p. 452)

In describing the accessory food factors as having catalytic func-tions, Hopkins stated immediately that the unknown substances

12 During the war most of the investigation into the growth promoting accessory food faprotein feeding experiments mentioned above. Because the success of these experiments wafood factor insofar as it would allow them to bring their protein experiments to successsubstance specifically, remained largely stagnant until after the war even as the metabolis1915; Mendel, 1914, 1915; Osborne 1914, 1915).

13 Mark Weatherall (1995) examines the publication of Hopkins’s early work in the Dailycultural history of nutrition science.

14 Accessory food factors emerged within and contributed to a change in the sciences of lifchange was the development of a ‘general theory of life processes, based on a new awarenestheory of life processes, which considered that living cells were constituted by living protovariety of established fields, brought together by a common outlook on the physico-chemi(ibid., p. 194). Significantly the Lister Institute, which was very active in vitamin research

15 In 1911 one William L. Braddon (b. 1862) requested that the Lister Institute for PrevBraddon that he approached the Lister Institute when an early and strong proponent of thColonial Service who spent his career researching beriberi in the Federated Malay States, nthough clearly he remained interested in the problem of beriberi. In response to Braddon’s rwho had also worked for the British Colonial Service, directed much effort and money to

were mechanisms, important not to the body’s structure, but toits dynamics and its metabolism (Hopkins, 1913–1914). The vita-mins do not themselves serve as the building blocks in metabolismrather they direct the initiation of the processes. They are mecha-nisms by which a spate of metabolic processes are signaled, initi-ated, driven and in the early literature the vitamins are referredas an ‘activator’ or as ‘the active substance’ (Cooper, 1912, 1913,1914a–c).

This early work by Hopkins13 was important to physiology inso-far as, in these feeding experiments, Hopkins acquired evidence thatthe functions of chemical equilibrium during metabolism are at-tained through appeal to and in contact with the external environ-ment. Of course, it was known that animals acquired theirsustenance from the external environment, but this was the first in-stance in which it was suggested that animals might also acquirepart of their regulatory function, their organizational capacity,through appeal to the external environment.14

This aspect of the physiology of nutrition was important to theuses the scientists made of the vitamins during World War I andthe ways in which the vitamins emerged from World War I re-search as bio-political objects. The vitamins are moments whenthe order of the organism is stimulated by a source from the exter-nal environment. Catalysts are differentials; they increase the rateof thermodynamically feasible reactions. These unknown andaccessory food factors are packets that function as potential energyin the metabolism of the organism. They boost reactions to proceedwhich, despite having all the elements they need to go forward, doso only at very slow rates, or not at all. Organisms require the vita-mins because there are sites of abeyance within their metabolism.Because the abeyance in human nutrition and the catalysis of thevitamins constitute a differential, vitamins are sites of a potentialfor connection within nutrition. Connections can be made betweenthe organism and the environment because of this difference in en-ergy. A lack of substance from the external environment could nowaccount for the decay of the functions maintaining an organism’srestorative powers. A capacity for connection is therefore funda-mental to nutrition. Now the study of regulation had to accountfor a system dependent upon the external environment for the pro-vision of a catalytic function.

For example, through research undertaken at the Lister Institutebetween 1911 and 1912, Funk was convinced that beriberi was theresult of a lack of some necessary substance in the diet (Follis,1960, p. 313; Ihde & Becker, 1971, p. 26; Smith, 1997, p. 143).15

In 1912, Funk undertook a review of the literature concerned withseveral diseases, but most particularly beriberi, that had been relatedin various ways to poor diet. Funk’s review of the literature, ‘The eti-ology of deficiency diseases’ was a report on current knowledge, anattempt to survey the field and get a lay of the land; perhaps so thatnew research projects at the Lister Institute would begin on an equalfooting with ongoing research (Funk, 1912). Funk used his report to

ctor was undertaken in American laboratories concerned to proceed with the isolateds their primary concern, the laboratories pursued the question of the ‘as yet unknown’ful conclusion. As a result, knowledge of the metabolism of the growth-promotingm of other vitamins was illuminated during the course of the war (McCollum, 1914,

Mail as part of an advertising campaign for a type of brown bread as a moment in the

e that began around 1900 and led to the development of the field of biochemistry. Thiss of the importance of enzymes’ (Kohler, 1973, p. 181) as distinct from the protoplasmplasm molecules. The field of biochemistry ‘was initially composed of specialists in a

cal nature of life, a common belief that enzymes were the key agents in life processes’during the war, became a centre of the early biochemistry program (ibid., p. 196).entive Medicine in London investigate the problem of beriberi. It was fortuitous fore ‘accessory food factors’ was working there. Braddon was a physician in the Britishever to much success (Fraser, 1998). Braddon had retired from active service in 1908equest, the Director of the Lister Institute at the time, Dr. Charles Martin (1866–1955),the investigation of beriberi.

R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189 183

show where previous research was mistaken in not attributing thesediseases to a lack of ‘accessory food factors’ (Carter, 1977, p. 135).Throughout his time at the Lister, Funk worked tirelessly to isolatefrom different foods the active substance and had even coined theterm ‘vitamine’ (Funk, 1911a,b). When the evidence of a growth-pro-moting accessory food factor emerged it only strengthened hisconvictions.16

Although the work Funk surveyed did not often consider thepossibility, from his review of the literature he concluded thatthe accessory food factors served some kind of regulatory functionin animal metabolism and that the accessory food factor that pre-vented beriberi served specifically as a regulator in the metabolismof nervous tissue. In work performed just the year before Funk’s re-view, ‘Schaumann expressed the idea that the curative agent actsonly as an activator, and that . . . these minute quantities cannotbe considered as food, but can only act as hormones’ (Funk,1912, p. 348). From experimental work at the Lister Institute thenext year, Funk’s colleague, Evelyn Ashley Cooper concluded that,‘The antineuritic substance behaves as an activator or catalyst inmetabolism, thereby rendering possible the assimilation of certainnutrients’ (Cooper, 1913, p. 722).

In the investigations into beriberi undertaken by researchers atthe Lister Institute, knowledge of the regulatory function of thevitamin necessary to prevent beriberi became increasingly refined.For example, in his literature review, Funk cited work in Dutchfrom 1901 and 1909 that he determined ‘says clearly that the dis-ease breaks out when a substance necessary for the metabolism ofthe peripheral nervous system is lacking in the food’ (Funk, 1912,p. 343). In a 1912 paper, Cooper went further in presenting the reg-ulatory function of the accessory food factor and argued that stud-ies until this point suggested that, ‘the anti-neuritic substance is anactivator by which the assimilation of phosphorus [in nervous tis-sue] is rendered possible’ (Cooper, 1912, p. 438). Throughout 1914,research increasingly linked the anti-neuritic vitamin to properfunctioning of the nervous system and proper carbohydratemetabolism. ‘It is apparent, therefore, that whole wheat bread con-tains some element (or elements) lacking in white bread, which arenecessary for the maintenance of proper body metabolism’ (Ohler,1914, p. 243). And in a 1914 paper, Funk determined from the re-sults of feeding experiments with pigeons that, ‘Vitamine thusseems to have a distinct influence on the glycogen metabolism’(Funk & Schoenborn, 1914, p. 331).

As a result of this increasingly refined understanding of thefunction of this vitamin, the concept of the vitamins also becamedifferentiated. Funk concluded from his review of the literaturethat there were in all likelihood, three vitamins at work in humannutrition each serving as a regulatory function in different pro-cesses. ‘From these experiments I am inclined to think that scurvyvitamin is different from the beriberi vitamin, although chemicallybelonging to the same class of substances’ (Funk, 1912, p. 353).And, from a personal communication with Hopkins regarding theaccessory food factor that was found to secure growth, Funk re-ported, ‘I suppose that the substance facilitating growth found inmilk is similar, if not identical, with the vitamins described byme’ (ibid., 365). Now there were known to be three vitamins re-quired in human nutrition: a vitamin that participates as a regula-tor carbohydrate metabolism and nervous tissue development, avitamin that regulates processes of growth and development anda vitamin essential to the prevention of scurvy. This conclusionwas subsequently generally accepted by those in the field (Cooper,1913).

16 Funk was the only scientist working to isolate the vitamins before World War I. It is sbecause comparatively he meets with such little success. Possibly Funk pursued the questioelucidate the chemical reactions, the metabolic processes in which they were involved.

Following Funk’s survey of the field and his speculative conclu-sion, Cooper published a survey of the ‘distribution of the sub-stance or substances preventing polyneuritis amongst foodstuffs’(Cooper, 1912, p. 439). In a later paper, Cooper said he had beenoccupied by the question of distribution of the vitamin for a whilebecause the methods of chemical isolation were as yet insufficient.‘For some time the prevention of beriberi must therefore dependupon the addition to the polished rice of foodstuffs known to con-tain the antineuritic substance and accordingly Cooper (1913) hasinvestigated the distribution of this substance amongst variousfoodstuffs by a series of dietetic experiments upon birds’ (Cooper,1913, p. 722). Here again, to investigate the physiological function,the ‘anti-neuritic power’ of the vitamin, Cooper investigated thedistribution of the vitamin amongst foodstuff as the only meansavailable given contemporary chemical techniques.

In a later study of the anti-neuritic power of various food-stuffs,Cooper concluded that ‘various ox-tissues are not of equal anti-neuritic power, liver being most effective in preventing polyneuri-tis, then cardiac muscle and cerebrum, next cerebellum, and leasteffective voluntary muscle and cow’s milk’ (Cooper, 1914a, p.19). Cooper then suggested that the rate of absorption of each ofthese foodstuffs must be investigated, ‘Before attempting to drawconclusions from the above results’ (ibid.). I suggest that, despiteCooper’s investigation of a range of different foods, Cooper’s prob-lem was the physiological function of the vitamins as distinct froma problem of food supply or diet. ‘No conclusions can consequentlybe draw as to the actual distribution of the active substances in theanimal body, until the extent to which the various tissues are ab-sorbed from the alimentary canal of the birds has been determined’(ibid., p. 22). In this instance, the question of the distribution of thevitamin in food was born of the problem of its metabolic function.

Cooper’s survey of the distribution of the anti-neuritic vitaminin foods and the general method of surveying the distribution ofthe vitamins in various foods established that our nutritional needfor the vitamins is also the capacity to connect to different forms ofnourishment. This is a significant point insofar as it means that thevitamins are only a capacity to connect, not the necessity to con-nect to certain foods time and again. The vitamins are the possibil-ity for difference in nutrition, the capacity for change, thepossibility for maintenance and growth in different nutritive envi-ronments. The connections that can be made in this regard are notdetermined in any one organism. It is not that humans must eatblueberries to attain their vitamin C requirements. Because eachof the vitamins is found in various sources, the need for vitaminsis the capacity to make different and various connections to theenvironment. These energetic abeyances and differentials are thepotential to connect up with and become part of potentially vari-ous, different assemblages of environments and organisms. Wecan attain our vitamin C from blueberries, pine needle tea or freshraw meat, to name only a few sources. The vitamins are sites ofopenness, potential and possibility for the organism and they aretherefore some measure of the organism’s capacity to meetchanges in its environment with success, to develop successfulrelations with newly emergent nutritive environments or nutritivepossibilities.

In the conclusion of his review of the literature, Funk consideredthe significance of the vitamins to the life of the organism. ‘In foodthe organism is forced to find all the substances which are neces-sary for life, and which are present . . . only in small amount’ (Funk,1912, p. 364). I have characterized the function of the vitamins interms that can be construed rather positively (capacity, potential

triking to compare his work with that of others working on the problem at the timen to such lengths because he hoped the chemical formula of a vitamine might further

184 R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189

difference, variety, openness), whereas Funk’s characterizationpaints the darker aspect of the reality. For Funk, the vitamins’capacity for connection is born of necessity and means the organ-ism lives according to a force to fulfill bare necessity. Because itmust connect to the environment to maintain its regulatory func-tion, the organism is forced to search through various sources forall its needs. The vitamins are sites of life’s exuberance but specif-ically sites of life’s necessary exuberance in the face of changingand therefore difficult, sometimes hostile, environments. The vita-mins are sites of potential connection and enable the organism tosucceed precisely insofar as they can connect to different and new-ly emergent food sources. We must understand the vitamins notonly as involved in the emergent properties of the organism, butalso as a site where the emergent environment affects the organ-ism’s possibilities for development.

At this point, we must bear in mind the regulatory function ofthe vitamins. Because they function at the onset of an organism’sorganization, vitamins are a crux of normativity. The vitaminsare essential to maintaining the organism’s organization. Opennessto difference, therefore, is an organizing principle of the organismwhose nutrition is constituted in part by the vitamins. The possibil-ity to make new and different connections within nutritive pro-cesses at the onset of self-organization engenders the capacity toinstitute new norms. The vitamins, therefore, are sites of the body’saptitude to adjust to its environment. Nutritional success for anorganism is constituted as a ‘capacity to be affected, an active drift-ing’ (Doyle, 2003, p. 131). Vitamins are biological objects that en-able the organism to live in normativity, rather than with strictnorms and it is precisely because of this that the vitamins canand indeed must develop as bio-political objects.

Vitamins are sites of openness, but they are also simply thecapacity for connection, they are not the necessity for particularconnections. Because the vitamins and our nutritional need forthe vitamins provide an interface surface, our bodies can becomeengaged in projects that are discursive, institutional, political, evenviolent. The vitamins are instances of life’s normative aptitude, itscapacity to make new and different connections and to institutenew norms, that can be grasped for political ends and becomebio-political. Insofar as the vitamins became stabilized as bio-polit-ical objects with a normative capacity, they enabled the bio-polit-ical complex not only to maintain certain norms but to establishnew norms in response to the development of new political andhealth situations. The vitamins are sites where the state is enabledto maintain the health of its population even through various,emergent and new vagaries and dangers. A bio-political complexthat includes the vitamins as part of its apparatus does not needto struggle to maintain the same norms in the face of changingeconomies and political situations, but is able to adjust and estab-lish new norms. A bio-political complex with vitamins is thereforethat much more robust in the face of political changes and instabil-ity. The vitamins are not only objects deployed for British food sup-ply problems during the First World War, they become stabilizedas objects that can be deployed as needed in each war thereafteras well. The insidious aspect of this power is that it is ‘power tomake live’ in this war and in future food economies, whatever theymight be, that will be needed by the state.

3. The problem of wartime food supply and the tool of thevitamins

World War I broke out in July 1914 and as early as September1914 Australian forces were overwhelmed by beriberi (of course,in all likelihood, the troops were afflicted with beriberi beforegoing into the conflict). For this reason, in September 1914,researchers at the Lister Institute were asked to pursue the ques-

tions of food supply and population health, specifically in this casethe questions of a population of soldiers and their army rations(Chick & Hume, 1956). As I have shown, researchers at the Listerwere already working on the questions concerning the vitaminsand had some sense of their potential. The approach by the govern-ment was an opportunity for the biochemists to pursue their unan-swered questions concerning the vitamins as well as to provide thepotential solution of the vitamins for the problem of wartime foodsupply and deficiency disease.

The problem of wartime food supply enrolled the vitamins aspotential solutions, even as it shifted the problem of the vitaminsfrom a problem of metabolism in the individual organism to regu-lation within the population. Since 1911 researchers at the ListerInstitute had been working to isolate and to determine the meta-bolic function of the vitamin that prevented Beriberi. But nowthe problem was of beriberi and the diet of the Australian troops.This was the moment when it became possible to consider prob-lems of population health, deficiency disease and food supplieswith the vitamin as a tool. The investigation used what was alreadyknown of the regulatory function of the vitamin to consider theproblem of deficiency disease amongst the troops and their rations.This shift in problematic is signaled when we read in published re-ports of this research: ‘The following experiment corroboratesthese results and also illustrates a point of great practical impor-tance’ (Braddon & Cooper, 1914, p. 336). And: ‘The conclusionclearly emerges that the amount of active substance required bythe organism stands in some quantitative relation to the carbohy-drate ration which has to be metabolized’ (ibid., p. 342). The simplestatement that the findings have great practical importance signalsa change in the constitution of the problem. This conclusion, thatthere is a quantitative relationship between the amount of carbo-hydrate consumed and the amount of vitamin needed to metabo-lize it, could readily further elucidate that problem of the role ofvitamins in metabolism. In stating that the finding has practicalimport, the scientists signaled that the metabolic function of thevitamin was no longer the problem, rather the vitamin was nowthe tool to apply to the problem of beriberi amongst the troops.

Because Braddon & Cooper were thinking of problems of popu-lation health, deficiency disease and food supply with these newlyunderstood accessory food factors, the further understanding ofthe regulatory function of the vitamin has immediate application.The vitamin’s regulatory function and its capacity to make newand different connections within nutrition began to carve a paththrough these problems for the scientists. The scientists’ under-standing of the metabolic function of the vitamin let them thinkabout the ration most suited to supply the Army.

This fact is of practical importance in the prevention of beriberi,as attention must evidently be paid not only to the absoluteamount of anti-neuritic foodstuff incorporated into the dietary,but also to the proportion which this bears to the total carbohy-drate ration. (Ibid., p. 351)

Because scientists were using the vitamins to find their waythrough the problems of food supply and population health evenwhile the vitamins were still ‘function ascriptions’ and still un-known biochemical molecules, the problem through which thevitamins were investigated was framed within these conditions.A finer resolution of the vitamin concept emerged from this spe-cific and particular problematization.

Admitting, then, that in the production of beriberi deprivationof a certain substance is an essential factor, it is of obviousimportance to ascertain . . . the composition of diets bestadapted for promoting . . . an economical utilization of theactive substance and yet adequate for maintaining the organismin nutritive equilibrium. (Ibid., p. 333)

R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189 185

The notions of economic utilization and of nutritive equilibriumare aspects of the problems presented by the vitamins that are newhere. And it is in this moment, I suggest, that the vitamins begantheir development as bio-political objects.

Economic utilization and nutritive equilibrium emerged as as-pects of the regulatory function of the vitamins within a problem-atic of population health and food supply. The notion of economicutilization of food is a concept, concerned as much with food sup-ply and distribution as it is with metabolic function of the vita-mins. The notions of ‘economic utilization’ and ‘nutritiveequilibrium’ both speak to patterns of food distributions.17 Theyare bio-political concepts concerned with what would have alreadybeen a state concern: that its military and civilian population hadenough to eat. As it emerged here, the regulatory function of thevitamins tied the nutritional requirements of the individual to thedistribution of food within a larger population. The problem of thevitamins began to develop as a bio-political problem. The soldierswere now enabled in economic utilization of food and in nutritiveequilibrium by the regulatory function of the vitamin. Significantly,in this instance, the vitamins were biological sites of regulatory func-tion that both necessitated and enabled new possibilities within foodsupply and distribution. That is, they emerged as sites of potentialwith which the nation-state might negotiate problems of food sup-ply and population health.

4. Establishing nation-state problematization of nutrition

The British government first problematized food as a wartimestrategy in mid-1915, when a Food (War) Committee was estab-lished to provide a venue for several bureaucrats to develop andpresent a proposal to blockade German food supplies (Teich,1995, p. 218). In December 1914, a group of German scientistshad tabled a report, entitled the Eltzbacher Report, which con-cluded that German food supplies would hold for two years evenif the nation was to be completely isolated from outside supplies(Stark, 1984). The Royal Society’s Food (War) Committee wasformed at the urging of economists and statisticians in the Britishgovernment who had determined, through a review of the Eltzb-acher Report and consideration of the German food supply, thatsuch a committee could be effective strategically for the war effort(Teich, 1995, p. 213). They considered that the conclusions of theEltzbacher Report were overly hopeful and that the food distribu-tion and supply plan developed and implemented by the Germangovernment was failing and that the spirit of German civilianswas flagging.

The measures for the redistribution of food resources asbetween animals and humans which were advocated by theBerlin experts and which have been put into operation by thegovernment have, to a large extent been failures owing bothto statistical miscalculation and to the inability of the Germanadministration to regulate the daily lives of all its sub-jects . . . And it is certainly not true that during this period Ger-

17 I suggest that ideas of food distribution and metabolic function could be brought togethwhich dominated British politics at the start of the twentieth century. This concept of natimilitary incompetence during the Boer War. Following these military embarrassments, consufficiently fit for it’s ‘Great Power’ status. This concern for fit and efficiency spanned manyscientific progress and technological advancement as well as military power. ‘[T]hough thedisparate, they were fused into a common substance by the alarm felt about Brtiain’s Greafood supply in terms of economic utilization would have been sensible within a rhetoricefficiency’ was pursued in large part through ‘a closer union between government and scwhich is relying upon the rhetoric of national efficiency (ibid.).

18 London, British Library, MS 42244, Ashley Papers, Memo Food Supply of German Emp19 Ibid.20 German nutrition science and biochemistry was highly regarded internationally and b

admiration also fit within a desire to emulate the material achievement’s Germany had wo1971, p. 55).

many has displayed any particularly remarkable spirit ofinternal unity, of trust in official wisdom or absence of antago-nism between opposing trade interests.18

These experts in economics saw the prevailing food supply con-ditions in Germany as an opportunity to seize some strategicadvantage for the British war effort. The committee was formedso that these economists might advise the British government ofthis state of affairs and they suggested that the government mightforce the German food situation into an advantage through the useof political and economic blockade of food import to Germany.

The explanation of Germany’s relative success hitherto in deal-ing with the food problem is therefore, we believe, to be foundin the opportunities it has had of supplementing insufficientsupplies by import . . . On the whole then the German outlookis even more alarming than less assured it was last year: andrequirements and supplies are not likely to balance one anotherunless there are considerable imports. His Majesty’s Govern-ment is doubtless informed as to the sources whence these nec-essary imports are reaching and may continue to reachGermany.19

It is not insignificant that the Food (War) Committee, whichwould become the forum for the development of much nutritionalknowledge, was struck in order to consider how food might be putto effective use as a wartime strategy. Indeed, it seems that orga-nizing the committee was not even a consideration of food primar-ily, but a consideration of strategy. Thinking of war strategy,interested governmental players noticed the food situation in Ger-many and seized this as a possible advantage for Britain. The Food(War) Committee was formed with people’s need for food as theobject of political mobilization. In this way food became problema-tized as a war strategy and this problematization of food as a warstrategy was legitimized and institutionalized in the Royal Soci-ety’s Food (War) Committee.

The violence at the origin of the Food (War) Committee high-lights the force by which basic nutrition is rendered political. It iseasier to see, in an instance of brute force and violence than inan instance of the development of ‘nutrition’, that the problematiz-ing of bodies for war is highly political. Through its tenure the Food(War) Committee rendered nutritional needs the subject of politi-cal mobilization. We will see in the development of the Food (War)Committee that nutrition continues to be taken up as a politicaltask and the problem of nutrition that developed through thiscommittee transformed the nutritional needs of human bodiesand scientific interest about them, into problems of political orga-nization. Blockading Germany created a new bio-political site fororder within the wartime British nation-state.

Ironically, British physiologists and biochemists were anxiousto establish the study of food as a contribution to the war effortin part because they admired the early effort of German scientiststo produce their Eltzbacher Report (Stark, 1984).20 The RoyalSociety’s Food (War) Committee, once struck, determined that their

er in the concept of economic utilization because of a concern for ‘national efficiency’onal efficiency arose in British public and politic life following the display of Britain’scern arose amongst the British public and British politicians that the nation was notareas and questions, including population health, national physique, diet, education,ideas out of which [the ideology of ‘national efficiency’] was formed were varied and

t Power status’ (Searle, 1971, p. 33). Conceiving of the relation between nutrients andof ‘national efficiency’. There is a significant bent to this logic, however, as ‘nationalience’ (ibid., p. 83). Therefore, we see a rhetoric of national efficiency invoke science

ire, 11 August 1915.

ecause many British and American biochemists had trained in Germany. This ironicn through what was considered by Britains to be superior ‘national efficiency’ (Searle,

186 R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189

next task would be to enquire into the food supply of the UK for theprevious year and the following year (ibid.). The Committee pro-duced three reports, one each at the beginning and the end of July1916 and one at the end of October that same year. I mention thesereports here for a couple of reasons. First, it is notable that thesewere the first investigations that reported on British food supply interms of the nutritional value, rather than in terms of the weightor price value (ibid.; Teich, 1995, p. 213). That is, this is the first timethat nutrition is problematized as a state concern in the same way inwhich the economic value of food had previously been problema-tized. The second reason I mention these reports is because the con-clusion reached by the committee in these reports was that the foodsupply in the UK was adequate and would prove adequate in theyears to come if suitable distribution was ensured (Teich, 1995, p.218). With the submission of these reports to the British governmentit was established that the purpose of the Royal Society’s Food (War)Committee was specifically the initiation and supervision of experi-ments to ensure that the available food supply remained adequate.The problems investigated by scientists for this committee weretherefore to be problems of food supply and distribution and themaintenance of healthy populations, military and civilian, in theUK at the time.

5. Wartime problematization of vitamins: the front line

Because the British were confident that their food supplieswould last, instances of disease amongst the troops were the firstpoints at which the government asked scientists for help in think-ing through the problem of rationing in wartime and populationhealth. Beriberi had been a military problem for centuries priorto World War I, as had scurvy, and both beriberi and scurvy contin-ued to plague the Allied troops through the winter of 1915 andspring of 1916 (Carter, 1977, p. 124; Smith, 1997, p. 143). Beriberihad developed amongst British troops deployed to the Middle Eastwith a cohort of Indian Army troops, who were free from the dis-ease (Teich, 1995, p. 227). In winter 1915 British troops and troopsof the Indian Army were under siege at Kut-al-Amara by Turkishtroops and by February of 1916 the supply of highly-milled flourfor British troops had run low. It was at this point that the beriberithat had plagued the British troops cleared up; because of thesiege, the British army was unable to renew its usual rations ofhighly-milled wheat flour and the British troops were forced toshare the more coarsely-milled wheat flour ration of the IndianArmy that, as a result of its coarser milling, contained more wheatgerm and therefore, more of the ‘anti-beriberi vitamin’. The IndianArmy troops never faced beriberi but because of their dietaryrestrictions, they were cut off from the only supply of the ‘anti-scurvy vitamin’ available to the British troops, that is, fresh meat.Ultimately, due to heavy losses in battle and a force plagued by dis-ease, the British capitulated at Kut-al-Amara.

Following the siege and surrender at Kut-al-Amara, the ColonialOffice and the War Office approached Harriette Chick, a Lister Insti-tute researcher and member of the Food (War) Committee to soli-cit help in solving the problem of scurvy amongst their troops intheatre (Smith, 1995, pp. 143–144). From her diary, we know thisfirst approach was made in summer 1917. Chick’s notebook entryreads:

June Monday 4 1917

Sir H Charles rang up from the India Office saying he hadreceived a document from the Medical Advisory Committeean opinion expressed on the Germinating Pulse method of pre-

21 London, Wellcome Library, PP/CHI/A.1/2 Diary, 1917.22 Ibid.

venting scurvy . . . I could not hear very well and suggested Ishould come to see him appointment made for Tuesday.21

Apparently Chick did not get the appointment she wanted becauseit was not until that Thursday that she met Charles at the IndiaOffice:

June Thursday 7, 1917

Saw Sir H Charles at the India office 2:30. He has not had time toread through the Report of the medical advisory committee forMesopotamia which I had sent around to him on Tuesday. Ishowed him the diet . . . pointing out that the ‘operation’ rationwas practically a scurvy diet . . . The military secretary Sir Her-bert came at Sr. Charles’ request . . . He has had much experi-ence with scurvy and was much interested . . . I explained thedifferent distribution of the food vitamins and the value of ger-minated peas. Sir Charles pointed out the . . . commendation ofthe Medical Advisory Committee expressed disappointmentand criticized their report showing the ignorance it displayedof Indian custom etc. That germinated peas was not a ‘ration’seeing they [Indians] eat dahl daily . . . I urged that some stepsbe taken so that a supper of dahl and germination be spreadover Mesopotamia before this coming hot weather. They bothagreed that it could be done. Sir Charles also thought some trialscould also be made at the scurvy camp at Kurachee. Sir HerbertCox was very sympathetic and encouraging.22

What Chick envisioned was the dissemination of bean sprouts andsprouted lentils to troops in theatre. Vitamin C is found in living tis-sue and when beans begin to sprout they also produce vitamin C.The army had previously been using limes as their source of vitaminC but because of wartime transportation conditions, limes were nolonger available (Wolf & Carpenter, 2003, p. 3026). But our need forthe vitamins is also the capacity to connect to different foods and itwas with this physiological capacity that Chick solved the problemof food supply and troop health for the government. Becausevitamin C can be had from this novel source of germinated beans,wartime food supply could be converted to a healthy force andthe bio-political system of waging war could be sustained.

We see the vitamins’ capacity to connect finding a way throughthe problems of food supply and population health and emergingagain as a bio-political object. It is with the capacity at the site ofthe vitamins for human nutritional needs to be met with variousfoods, that Chick could present to the government a way throughthe problem of wartime food supply and Indian customs. Withina force riddled with deficiency disease, the anti-scurvy vitamin be-came a bio-political problem that necessitated some re-arrange-ment of the food economy. But the vitamin also enabled thepossibility of rearranging the food economy and ‘spreading a dietof dahl and germinated peas’ over Mesopotamia.

Despite continuing efforts throughout the war, biochemistswere unable to isolate a vitamin substance. Because of this diffi-culty biochemists concerned themselves with the stability andthe stabilization of the vitamins in whole foods for various condi-tions of transportation and preparation. From this research on sta-bility and stabilization, Chick published an article in the summer of1917 on ‘The distribution among foodstuffs of the substances re-quired for the prevention of a) beriberi and b) scurvy’, whereinshe stated explicitly the point of this investigation was, ‘to treatonly of such substitutes as are convenient for transport, and hencesuited to the needs of armies in the field’ (Chick & Hume, 1917, p.152). In her report to the war office she wrote, ‘it is difficult to

R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189 187

imagine any circumstances in which this form of antiscorbutic foodcould not be made available . . . [it is] eminently suited for trans-port . . . [and] in the unavoidable shortage of fresh fruit or vegeta-bles [will serve as] a substitute immediately available on thespot by germinating the pulses included in the stores’ (ibid., p.160).

In Chick’s idea that vitamins could be made available on thespot she conceptualized the vitamins as a turning point, as the cruxof the matter, as the flick of a switch that would return the systemto its proper functioning. I see the vitamin function as a converterwithin the British bio-political complex. A food supply system thathad been effectively running into the ground at the point of troophealth was converted on the spot to a system that ran into troopvitality. Once this new source of vitamin C was in place, the army’sfood supply system was up and running again, systematicallynourishing soldiers.

In both these instances, of spreading germinated peas over Mes-opotamia and of finding foods suited to transport, the vitamins’capacity to connect and to allow the organism to maintain its reg-ulatory functions with new food sources, opened paths through theproblems of food supply and of population health facing the army.Insofar as they allowed for these solutions, the vitamins, stabilizedas such in whole foods, were a boon for wartime strategists of foodsupply. Chick was working with an army ration that was incom-plete, which left the troops in ruin, decimated by scurvy. But be-cause we can obtain our vitamins from various sources, Chickwas able to organize a stable supply of vitamins that, upon arrivaland with proper soaking, would convert the food supply on thespot so that it did in fact develop into a nourished army. The move-ment through the food supply of the peas rendered what was notnutritious food into a sufficiently nutritious ration. A food supplysystem that had been breaking down at the point where it wassupposed to nourish was again allowed to flow into nourishedsoldiers.

The significance, for the government, of stabilizing the vitaminswithin whole foods was that the entire food supply system did nothave to be rearranged. Rather, sources of the vitamins could betransported and inserted into the already existent but inadequatefood supply and render it sufficient. Once the vitamins could bestabilized for transport they could be inserted at different sites ofthe food supply system and render it systematically complete.Within the organization of a nation for war, the physiologicalcapacity to connect to new sources of vitamins opened pathsthrough the problems of food supply. Once foods were foundwhich were suitable to transport, the power of the vitamins to con-vert what was once an inadequate food supply into a nutritiousfood supply became a state power by which to maintain its bio-political complex for war.

6. Wartime problematization of vitamins: on the home front

Of course within a wartime system of food supply one of thesignificant problems is shortage (Teich, 1995, p. 213, 224). Becausethey can be had from various sources and because of their regula-tory function, the vitamins provided a two-fold solution to theproblem of shortage. First supplies of food could expand as vita-mins could be found in unusual sources and second the regulatoryfunction of these vitamins from unusual sources meant that thelimited food available was in fact nourishing and sustained thepopulation. For example, Chick wrote, ‘At the present time the reg-ular use of fresh orange juice or fresh grape juice in the infants’ die-tary may present some difficulty owing to war conditions. We aredetermining the antiscorbutic value of raw juices expressed fromvarious root vegetables which are home grown and plentiful’(Chick et al., 1918b, p. 2). Again, because we can get our vitamins

from different sources, by using root vegetables rather than or-anges, or sprouted beans when limes were unavailable, a food sup-ply that had not previously been nutritious could be rendered so,allowing these specific formations of food supply and ofpeople to be maintained with success by and for the Britishgovernment.

In fact, in increasingly limited food supply situations presentedby wartime conditions, the vitamins allowed what had not previ-ously even been food to begin to work as food. One food scientist,Alfred Hess (1865–1933), was particularly ambitious to expand theinventory of vitamin sources:

It is clear that there is a need for efforts directed to enlarge theinventory of antiscorbutic foodstuffs. I suggested [previously]the use of the orange peel, instead of or in conjunction withthe juice of the orange, in the dietary of the infants who arenot receiving fresh food. Since this time I have made use of aninfusion of the peel in a large infant asylum and found itentirely satisfactory. In this way the necessity will be obviatedof giving orange juice. (Hess & Fish, 1914, p. 405)

The vitamins had the power to render sustainable a healthy popu-lation and a government that was not broken by the need to acquireexpensive oranges.

Near the end of the war, Hess presented further results of hiswork with orange peels and reported on the significance of hisfindings for the nation in its economic situation:

I bring this forward as a suggestion for making use of a wastefood product [orange peels]. At a time when oranges are soexpensive and the cost of food has become a serious item, bothfor the individual and the institution, it seems as if this sugges-tion may be welcomed by the housewife and baby welfare sta-tions. Some arrangement seems possible whereby hotels wouldsave these orange peels for this purpose. By this procedure weobtain about twice the quantity of antiscorbutic material fromthe orange’. (Hess, 1918, p. 943)

Vitamins served as the biological capacity by which the nationmight convert its hotel garbage to health and wellbeing for itsorphans.

Because they can be acquired from different sources and be-cause they serve a regulatory function in metabolism, the vita-mins are the potential for the body of the nation to always betaken beyond the limit of its current state of food distribution.What had been hotel garbage was now the prevention of scurvyin orphans. Vitamins are source points at which the state mighteffectively re-invest the health of the nation, in the peel of the or-ange, rather than the meat of the orange, or in germinated beans,rather than limes.

It became increasingly clear, throughout the war, that the phys-iological capacity to obtain vitamins from various sources was asource of political power for the government. For example, in hisbook, Changes in the food supply and their relation to nutrition, Lafay-ette B. Mendel introduced the matter of food shortage by saying,‘The present European war is affording an opportunity to studythe relation of the food supply to unexpected economic and terri-torial conditions’ (Mendel, 1916, p. 46). Mendel suggested how-ever, that the calorie idea had limitations and that even in timesof shortage, the importance of vitamins to food supply and nutri-tion had to be taken into consideration. Therefore, within his dis-cussion of food shortage he wrote, ‘We may conceive of vitaminsas stimulating certain physiological process. The lubricant is quiteas important to a machine as is the energy furnishing fuel. So thesediet accessories may have a peculiar usefulness’ (ibid., pp. 46–50).Here Mendel explicitly framed the importance of the vitamins interms of allowing some flexibility in food supply in light of eco-

188 R. Smith / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009) 179–189

nomic and territorial conditions. This flexibility, in our physiology,allowed the state’s bio-political organization to be maintained dur-ing war.

The vitamins emerged from being ‘as yet unknown’ substancesneeded by individual animals for proper metabolism and were sta-bilized as bio-political objects needed for the successful regulationof population health and food supply. Increasingly the body thatwas under consideration by researchers was not the body of theirlab animals or even the human body, but rather it was the body ofthe nation. For example, Hess wrote, ‘Every individual requires acertain amount of antiscorbutic substance in his dietary, or toput this statement in a broader way, every nation has need for aper capita quota of foodstuffs containing this necessary food factor,if scurvy is to be avoided’ (Hess, 1918, p. 942). And toward the endof the war, Chick undertook research that, ‘was planned . . . in re-sponse to wartime requirements, both civil and military withinthe British Empire’ (Chick et al., 1918, p. 131). The biochemistryof the vitamins was so important to the working of the nation statethat the bodies of people did not even need mentioning here. TheBritish nation state at this point was dependent for its organizationupon the metabolic function of the vitamins.

The vitamins emerged as players in wartime food economyinsofar as the British state regulated problems of food supplyand population health with their normative capacity. Vitaminsbecame regulators in the wartime bio-political complex whenthey allowed the same food supply to be converted and to nour-ish civilian and military populations. The vitamins are sites of po-tential connection within human nutrition and because of thisthey served as tools to solve the problems, at once biologicaland political, of wartime food supply and population health. Whatwas useful to political administration was precisely the biologicalcharacter of the vitamins as regulatory functions. Because theyserve regulatory functions and because they can be obtained fromvarious sources, as biological objects, the vitamins are the organ-ism’s capacity to adjust to changes in its food supply. As politicalobjects, the vitamins’ regulatory functions were effective inallowing the government to adjust to emerging food problems,to render sufficient an otherwise insufficient wartime food sup-ply. Thus through World War I vitamins were increasingly stabi-lized as bio-political objects.

Acknowledgements

I am happy to acknowledge the support of the Max Planck Insti-tute for the History of Science as well as the Social Sciences andHumanities Council of Canada. Thanks to Daniel Braun for readingand commenting on the very first draft of this paper and to Hen-ning Schmidgen for reading and commenting on subsequent drafts.Thanks also to the members of Department III at the Max PlanckInstitute for the History of Science for their thoughtful feedbackeach time that I presented at our colloquium and to Tania Munzand Kelly Whitmer for a post-colloquium lunchtime workshop.Thanks finally to the two anonymous reviewers for this journalwhose comments and suggestions helped me improve themanuscript.

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