Biographical Memoirs Volume 45 (1974) / Chapter Skim
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Elmer Verner McCollum
Elmer Verner McCollum
Pages 278-352
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From page 279... ...
He was the first son and fourth child of Cornelius Armstrong McCollum and Martha Catherine Kidwell McCollum who sixteen years before had become homesteaders on one hundred sixty acres ten miles west and one mile north of Fort Scott, Kansas. His only brother, Burton, was sixteen months younger.
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From page 280... ...
As Dr. McCollum wrote of her, "She valued education for its own sake and for its influence on human dignity and refinement, because it enabled people to escape drudgery, increased their earning power, and won the esteem of people who cared for culture." Her determination, high ethical values, and respect for culture and her thrifty management of the family and its meager income and expenditures evidently were continuously felt in the family circle.
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From page 281... ...
McCol~um, and ultimately for advances in nutritional sciences, was the brave decision by the mother in 1896 to move the family to the vicinity of Lawrence, Kansas. The purpose was to provide opportunity for her two sons to attend high school and then the University of Kansas.
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From page 282... ...
He learned in such depth that when he entered the university, advanced credits were awarded in English composition, chemistry, and physics. Owing to the excessive hours of employment and his responsibilities on the family acreage, there was little time for social contacts.
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From page 283... ...
Following this he would walk about one-half mile to his home and, after eating, he would sleep the rest of the night. The work at the newspaper office was largely in the afternoons following school.
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From page 284... ...
Throughout his life he had a broad and active interest in the religions and philosophies of all ages, but he did not attend church services or participate in any kind of church programs. After entering the University of Kansas, in September 1900, he continued to light lamps and work at the newspaper office until he received an appointment as a student instructor in his third year.
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From page 285... ...
Cady. The latter was especially helpful in guiding him toward a superior graduate school for further training in organic chemistry.
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From page 286... ...
To suggest steps that might be taken to BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
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From page 287... ...
The illness and his intense preoccupation with research in organic chemistry had caused him to get seriously behind in crystallography, his second minor. When the teacher, Professor Samuel L
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From page 288... ...
Another financial and scholastic advantage was gained by the young Kansan when he competed with six other students in a comprehensive chemistry examination at the end of the first year and earned the coveted Loomis Prize of $400. Through the help of his closest friend, Bill Cramer, he obtained work one summer as a clerk at a hotel on Block Island, Rhode Island.
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From page 289... ...
This undertaking proved to be a most significant event in the advancement of nutrition, even though at the time McCollum would have preferred an academic position in organic chemistry. Having been appointed to a promising position, McCollum in 1907 married Constance Carruth, whom he had known at Lawrence, Kansas.
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From page 290... ...
Trying to gain a breakthrough in understanding the nutritional requirements of man and animals, McCollum read extensively in the literature. Of greatest interest to him was Maly's lahresbericht uber die Fortschritte der Tier-Chemie.
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From page 291... ...
Dr. McCollum's rat colony was the first in the United States maintained for nutritional investigations.
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From page 292... ...
In that year Osborne and Mendel reported that the demonstration of nutritional differences between proteins required the use of a supplement of "protein-free milk." This enabled the rats to grow well on a diet of purified components, even though the diet was not supplemented with flavors. In reporting some of their work, Osborne and Mendel implied that McCollum had been careless in his experiments.
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From page 293... ...
The generous and competent collaboration of Miss Davis in these fertile years was an important factor in McCollum's discovery of the first known fat-soluble vitamin, later designated vitamin A Also, she was involved in the development of what McCollum designated "the biological method for the analysis of a food." This resulted in the publication of many papers with Miss Davis, and later with others, concerning the supplementary relations among the common foodstuffs.
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From page 294... ...
By 1915 McCollum and Davis had found that when water or alcohol extractions of wheat germ or rice polishings were added, polished rice was greatly improved in nutritional quality. These experiments constituted the basis for their discovery that the antiberiberi factor, necessary to relieve polyneuritis in pigeons, was necessary for rats and that there were apparently only two unidentified nutrients necessary for such animals.
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From page 295... ...
Funk in 1914. In retrospect, McCollum's inadvertent use of only partially purified milk sugar in some of the early feeding trials, and the earlier caging procedure that allowed the young rats access to their feces, probably were decisive in bringing about the discovery of vitamin A as early as 1912 by McCollum and Davis.
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From page 296... ...
Although for a time there was a counterclaim concerning credit for the discovery of vitamin A, within a few years it became quite clear that the credit belonged to McCollum alone. All of McCollum's published experimental work had the help of Davis from 1909 to 1916 and of Nina Simmonds from 1916 to 1929.
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From page 297... ...
, and some observations of the dietary deficiencies of muscle meat, together with the new information about polished rice and the superiority of the germ as a source of nutrients, led me to make some important generalizations on human dietaries. I criticized the typical American's diet of that period as being of poor quality because it was derived too largely from white flour or cornmeal, muscle meats, potatoes, and sugar.
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From page 298... ...
Adding to his distress, early in April, just as the United States entered World War I, he received a letter from Mr. Herbert Hoover asking him to become a member of his Advisory Committee on Nutrition and to attend a meeting of this committee in Washington.
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From page 299... ...
McCollum quickly resumed nutritional investigations based largely on use of his transplanted rat colony. The new life was dominated by his driving desire to understand the chemical basis of nutrition and his goal to render a high level of public service in teaching and promoting the newer knowledge of nutrition.
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From page 300... ...
The latter asked McCollum to contribute two chapters on nutrition to his comprehensive treatise on endocrinology. BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS MAKING KNOWN THE NEWER KNOWLEDGE OF NUTRITION In the spring of 1918 McCollum accepted Dr.
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From page 301... ...
Hoover promptly arranged for him to give talks on the same subject in many of the major cities. The talks discussed the poor quality of the typical diet in the United States, and they showed how menus could be constructed with combinations of foods that tended to correct the deficiencies of each.
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From page 302... ...
This included special articles based on interviews with McCollum that appeared in such publications as The New York Times and The Saturday Evening Post. Another avenue of major influence was through summer courses in nutrition that he gave for several years at universities in California, Colorado,
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From page 303... ...
She became his wife in 1945. THE DISCOVERY OF VITAMIN D The extraordinary variety of experimental diets systematically employed by McCollum in studying the nutritional inadequacies of plants led him to the chance observation in 1918 that young rats develop a ricketic condition when restricted to diets composed principally of cereal grains and providing disproportionate calcium-to-phosphorus ratios.
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From page 304... ...
To determine whether or not the nutrient might be vitamin A, which could be readily destroyed by oxidation, in 1922 the McCollum group passed air through heated cod liver oil and butterfat. Although the treated materials had lost all vitamin A potency, each retained its antiricketic activity.
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From page 305... ...
Among these, some recognition needs to be given to the exciting work with his student Cosmo Mackenzie on vitamin E and muscular dystrophy. They showed that the muscular dystrophy occurring in rats and rabbits on vitamin E-free diets can be completely cured by the provision of alpha-tocopherol, the first chemically defined substance with vitamin E activity.
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From page 306... ...
At that time the newspapers referred to manganese as the nutrient necessary for "maternal instinct." Also, male rats suffered testicular degeneration that led to complete sterility. This general area of research was significantly furthered by a long-term grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that became effective in 1936.
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From page 307... ...
ELMER VERNER MCCOLLUM 291 thinking of scientific bodies and public officials in matters concerning human nutrition than did McCollum. Such influence began to be significant before he left the University of Wisconsin.
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From page 308... ...
The first of many international and national responsibilities on public commissions and councils started for McCollum in 1931 when he became a member of the first International ConBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS ference on Vitamin Standards. It met in London both in 1931 and in 1934.
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From page 309... ...
ELMER VERNER MCCOLLUM 293 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FOOD INDUSTRY Throughout his professional life McCollum's interests and time remained broadly focused on nutritional research and the promotion of sound nutritional practices. This naturally included some associations with various food industries.
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From page 310... ...
As he wrote in a letter to the author in 1956, "The University has afforded me wonderful opportunities, and I wanted to return as much as possible of what was given me as salary." BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS THE BREAD ENRICHMENT DEBATE Owing to the widely recognized nutritional deficiencies of white bread, which over the years McCollum demonstrated and publicized, it was inevitable that the developments in producing certain synthetic vitamins should lead to proposals for their use in programs for the fortification of bread and flour. Thus in 1941, with all the enthusiasm and urgency that warborne causes and new converts can command, the national campaign to enrich bread and flour with thiamine, niacin, and iron was powerfully launched.
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From page 311... ...
His foresight and his unequivocal stand on scientific evidence as the basis for public policy remains a monument to his wisdom and determination. NUTRITION AND DENTAL HEALTH Early in his nutritional studies McCollum began to consider the possible relations of diet to dental caries and some other dental problems.
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From page 312... ...
Characteristically, in beginning the conference, he said: "I hope that we can melt down here the experimental work of recent years and come to an agreement, at least on some points, as to what is established. And in the case of subjects on which we are not in agreement, I hope we may be able to see where the trouble lies and determine what to do next in dental research." BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
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From page 313... ...
McCollum lived twenty-three years following his retirement from the faculty of The Johns Hopkins University. This long span surely was rich in his continuing contributions to nutritional science, particularly in the production of his outstanding book A History of Nutrition, his autobiography From Kansas Farm Boy to Scientist, and a large series of reflective articles, including some research papers and patents.
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From page 314... ...
298 Agriculture 33 Art and anthropology 33 Biochemistry and biology 71 Biography 245 Cartoons and humor 13 Chemistry 91 Dictionaries and encyclopedias 53 Economics 19 Education 14 Fiction 33 Geography and travel 33 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS History 179 Literature and languages 201 Medicine 32 Nature 21 Nutrition 113 Philosophy 42 Physics 12 Poetry 46 Religion 16 Royal Society 29 Science, general 37 Miscellaneous 40 The inventory does not include the many hundreds of scientific books and periodicals he gave to the department of biochemistry at Hopkins' School of Hygiene and Public Health at the time of his retirement. They are in the McCollum Reading Room in that department.
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From page 315... ...
In 1947, three years after McCollum's retirement, John Lee Pratt gave $500,000 to The Johns Hopkins University to support a research program on the biological significance of trace inorganic elements. This led immediately to the establishment of the McCollum-Pratt Institute.
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From page 316... ...
Characteristically, he wrote to the author, "It was a great party, and made me somewhat emotional, but I am recovering." In Dr. McCollum's reflections on the presentation of the portrait, his emotion-laden words portrayed more succinctly than he must have realized the depth of his feeling in being a pioneer in nutritional science.
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From page 317... ...
As he expressed it in a letter, "This has been a great year for us." It began with his attendance in Chicago as an honored guest at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the founding of the National Dairy Council, organized at his suggestion in 1915. Three months later he was escorted to Atlantic City to attend a dinner given by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, where he was privileged to witness the bestowal of the first annual McCollum Award, which is administered by that Society.
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From page 318... ...
Edwards Park, three years before McCollum's death: "McCollum's vision at the very start of his career of the necessity for an entirely new kind of attack and the revolutionary method to be employed in studies of nutrition was a scintillation of genius. It is no exaggeration to say that it started a new era in nutritional research." He was a gifted scientist and effective humanitarian who, in his own words, had ".
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From page 319... ...
ELMER VERNER McCOLLUM 303 vision of a specific nutrient lacking in the diet of people in great numbers in many parts of the world will do more than argument, law, and sermons to create comfort, courage, optimism, and purpose." And so Dr. McCollum is remembered.
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From page 320... ...
in chemistry, University of Kansas Began graduate work in organic chemistry, Yale Uni versity 1906 Ph.D. in organic chemistry, Yale University 1906-1907 Postdoctoral student under L
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From page 321... ...
ELMER VERNER McCOLLUM 305 Moved to The Johns Hopkins University as head of Department of Chemical Hygiene (later Biochemistry) in the School of Hygiene and Public Health 1917-1919 Member, Advisory Committee of the U.S.
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From page 322... ...
McCollum included in a
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From page 323... ...
Ernestine Becker, Baltimore, Maryland Member, American Philosophical Society 1947 Chairman, Advisory Committee of the Robert Gould Foundation 1948 Beginning of the McCollum-Pratt Institute for research on "trace elements" at The Johns Hopkins University Member, Advisory Committee of the McCollum-Pratt Institute 1951 Honorary LL.D. degree, The Johns Hopkins University Honoring Dr.
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From page 324... ...
V McCollum and his brother, Burton McCollum, at the University of Kansas McCollum Annual Award in Nutrition established by the National Dairy Council and to be administered by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition Citation by the Maryland Section of the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association for the initiation of research based on the use of laboratory rats to determine the chemical components of diet needed in nutrition Died, November IS, at Baltimore, Maryland Elmer Verner McCollum Chair in Biochemistry, established in the School of Hygiene and Public Health at The Johns Hopkins University
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From page 325... ...
Hyg. _ American Journal of Hygiene Am.
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From page 326... ...
1910 Nuclein synthesis in the animal body.
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From page 327... ...
Soc., 102, II, 368. A comparison of the nutritive value of the nitrogen of the oat and wheat grains for the growing pig.
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From page 328... ...
Chem., 19:245-50. The value of the proteins of the cereal grains and of milk for growth in the pig, and the influence of the plane of protein intake on growth.
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From page 329... ...
Chem., 28:211-29. 1917 The supplementary dietary relationships among our natural foodstuffs.
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From page 330... ...
The behavior of chickens fed rations restricted to the cereal grains.
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From page 331... ...
The dietary properties of the potato.
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From page 332... ...
IV. Cod liver oil as contrasted with butter fat
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From page 333... ...
VII. The relative effectiveness of cod liver oil as contrasted with butter fat for protecting the body against insufficient calcium in the presence of a normal phosphorus supply.
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From page 334... ...
XIII. The function of the organic factor as exemplified by cod liver oil.
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From page 335... ...
I A preliminary study of gross maxillary and dental defects in 220 rats on defective and deficient diets.
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From page 336... ...
Park. Studies on experimental rickets.
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From page 337... ...
XXVI. A diet composed principally of purified foodstuffs for use with the "line test" for vitamin D studies.
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From page 338... ...
A method for the biological assay of cod liver oil.
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From page 339... ...
Rask. Composition of lactic acid and gelatinized starch suitable for use as the acid component in baking powder.
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From page 340... ...
Age as a factor in the calculation of the relative percentage incidence of dental caries in rats on stock and deficient diets.
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From page 341... ...
III. Chemical changes in the blood following magnesium deprivation.
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From page 342... ...
V Changes in the mineral metabolism of animals following magnesium deprivation.
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From page 343... ...
VII. The effects of magnesium deprivation, with superimposed calcium deficiency, on the animal body, as revealed by symptomatology and blood changes.
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From page 344... ...
Day. Mineral metabolism, growth, and symptomatology of rats on a diet extremely deficient in phosphorus.
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From page 345... ...
Day. Histological studies of the tissues of rats fed a diet extremely low in phosphorus.
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From page 346... ...
Diet in relation to dental caries. BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Nature, 147: 104-08.
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From page 347... ...
Nutritional science and public health; Harben Lecture, 1941. Nutritional problems presented by low-income families.
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From page 348... ...
Med., 72:709-11. 1950 Fifty years of progress in nutritional research.
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From page 349... ...
2,681,927. Separation of amino acids.
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From page 350... ...
Dr. Elmer Verner McCollum.
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From page 351... ...
Elmer Verner McCollum A Biographical Sketch (1879-1967)
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