Forgotten mysteries in the early history of vitamin D

Abstract

In the early 1920s, workers in both England and the US had discovered that rats on a rachitic diet would remain healthy if irradiated with ultraviolet light. However, they also found, to their surprise, that control rats too would recover if either their jar was irradiated without the rat in it or if a cage-mate was removed for irradiation and then returned. The ideas that either air or material objects that had been irradiated continued themselves to convey healthful secondary radiations were investigated but not confirmed. There was then the commercially important finding that with irradiation, some rachitic diets would become anti-rachitic. However, this effect did not explain all the previous findings. Consumption of either small irradiated fecal particles or of feces from irradiated rats was the likely explanation for the recovery of nonirradiated rats, but this was not tested by direct experiment, and it now appears unlikely that feces from irradiated rats would show significant antirachitic activity. It is suggested that an alternative possibility-activity of grease from irradiated fur-deserves investigation. © 1999 American Society for Nutritional Sciences.