In 1919, a peculiar item appeared in the pages of the Zhonghua yixue zazhi (中華醫學雜誌 China Medical Journal), the periodical of a professional association founded just a few years earlier to promote Western-style medical knowledge. The article’s title proclaimed that “weitaming” (維他命 “vitamins”)—written in quotation marks, indicating that the term was novel—“are an essential factor in foods.” Its author began by identifying rich sources of vitamins, includ- ing “barley, unpolished rice, fermented things, and heart muscle” as well as liver. And then things got strange. The author offered a version of an English- language joke that he had, with charming sincerity, turned into a meditation on the power of the vitamin. The joke was that a doctor had recommended cod liver oil, a highly regarded supplement, to a sickly farmer who’d come to him with tuberculosis. Three years later, the two met again by chance and the farmer praised the doctor’s prescription, saying, “I followed your advice. I wanted to eat dog-liver oil but I couldn’t get any. So I hunted down a dog, cut out his liver and ate it.” As a result, he claimed, “my disease has been successfully, suddenly cured.” The doctor was astonished. He said, “I didn’t direct you to eat dog-liver oil. What I wanted you to drink was cod-liver oil.” The author then observed, “When I first heard this I thought it was a joke, but looking at it from today, maybe dog liver”—like cod liver—“has lots of ‘vitamin’ efficacy in it that would make his tuberculosis seem to disappear.” 1 This article, one of the earliest recorded mentions of the word “vita- min” in Chinese, conveys the aura of power and mystery that surrounded 4 ABSORBING VITAMINS: HOW A NUTRITIONAL PARADIGM WAS REINVENTED IN REPUBLICAN CHINA HILARY A. SMITH This is a portion of the eBook at doi:10.7551/mitpress/15518.001.0001 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/chapter-pdf/2506044/c003800_9780262381642.pdf by guest on 12 April 2025