A contribution to the study of the relationship between vitamin-B and the food intake in the dog

Abstract

Karr 2 showed that in the dog some relationship exists between the desire to partake of food and the amount of vitamin-B which is ingested. Yeast and tomato juice were used as sources of vitamin-B in his experiments. The increase of appetite which followed the administration of these products was believed to be due to the vitamin-B contained therein since yeast appeared to be less potent in this respect when autoclaved. This conclusion is supported by the results obtained in our experiments in which extracts of rice polishings, wheat embryo and navy bean were tested for the property of promoting appetite in dogs which had been fed on a diet lacking this dietary essential. The administration of any one of these preparations to such a dog was followed by a recovery of appetite which lasted for varying periods. All of these products were demonstrated to contain vitamin-B by tests on polyneuritic animals (pigeons and dogs). The potency of these products in promoting appetite seemed to parallel their potency in relieving symptoms in polyneuritic animals and this parallelism suggests that vitamin-B is the appetite-promoting factor in the preparations used.