Mellanby, Edward

Edward Mellanby and the Antirachitic Factor. (With John Parascandola). Bull. Hist. Med., 51, 507-15 (1977). 

The symptoms of vitamin D deficiency disease has been documented in 16th century literature. A clear picture of the basis for the disease and methods of treatment were unclear until the experiments by Sir Edward Mellanby (3,4). In the early 1920 s, cod liver oil was known to cure rickets and xerophthalmia. The name vitamin D was given to... 

We cannot describe all aspects of pesticides as environmental hazards, but we intend to address certain aspects of this problem many books are available (Carson, 1962 Ecobichon, 2001 Edwards, 1973 Emden, 1996 Graham and Wienere, 1995 Mellanby, 1970 Ratcliff, 1967 Walker et al., 1996). It is also easy to find opinions and facts on the Internet. Our problem is that we meet people who believe that cigarette smoking causes cancer because the tobacco plants are sprayed with insecticides and who at the same time are convinced that food produced without pesticides is always safe. We are therefore often engaged in debates as defenders, and not as critics, to the unnecessary and unsafe use of pesticides, as we should be. But pesticides are poisonous to man, animals, plants, and sometimes to all types of life, as many of us have experienced. 

More often than not it is the induction of an experimental deficiency disease that really marks the turning of the tide. Thus we owe to Edward Mellanby (1921) the first full and logical description of the production of rickets in puppies and its cure by the fat-soluble vitamin. ... 

In 1919, Sir Edward Mellanby (1884-1955) succeeded inducing rickets experimentally in dogs and curing the iUness with fish liver oU. A short time later, the Berlin physician Kurt Huldschinsky (1883-1941) observed that children with rickets, who play outside in the sun, rapidly become healthy again. The same effect was achieved artificially by exposing children to U V light of a wavelength between 230 and 315 nm (Fig. 7.39). 

In 1918, Sir Edward Mellanby of England demonstrated that rickets was a nutritional deficiency disease. He produced rickets in puppies, then cured it by giving them cod-liver oil. But Mellanby incorrectly attributed the cure to the newly discovered fat-soluble vitamin A. 

Edward Mellanby in 1919 (Mellanby, 1919) recognized rickets as a nutritional deficiency disease. The discovery of vitamin D followed the course of investigations on the etiology of rickets (McCollum, 1957). In subsequent years the effects of this vitamin on physiological responses in man and in animals formed the subject of intensive studies (Harris, 1954 Harrison, 1959). The elucidation of its structure and chemical synthesis followed essentially a parallel course (Fieser and Fieser, 1959). 

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