When Alice, in the rabbit hole, saw a cake with "EAT ME" written on it, she ate some of it; but she was no more astonished at suddenly growing to a height of seven feet than were the readers of a report in the magazine Science on the effect of vitamin B12, for it indicated that very small quantities of this vitamin are enough to give certain children the capacity for rapid growth.

Children, like the creatures of bacteria, have the property of growth. But the requirements of growth in the two are not usually alike. It is also known that vitamins and liver extracts have a great influence on human growth. And when the reports proved that vitamin B12 is wholly or partly responsible for the growth of the bacterium known as "Lactobacillus," its relation to human growth would not have seemed so astonishing had attention not been directed to the effect of this vitamin and its influence on living creatures.

Among the difficulties that hamper the determi-nation of growth is the absence of instruments sensitive enough to register the extent of hidden internal growth. In one of the studies published in Science, an experiment was carried out on eleven children suffering from stunted growth, whether for nutritional reasons or because of an internal disease preventing the body from flourishing, especially in cases where weakness overcomes all the body's powers of resistance and its inclination to grow.

The scientists admit that the basic problem they encountered was not confined to measuring the increase or failure of growth; it was likewise impos-sible for them to resort to the same experiments used with animals, such as halting growth for a set period by means of medical diets. Nor could they renew the natural conditions in the lives of the sick individuals: they failed to shield them from the influence of their surroundings, from emotional influence, and from fatigue or rest, for these factors have an effect on the rate of growth that no effort can avert or prevent from retarding growth.

The scientists were obliged to demonstrate the effect of vitamin B12 on children's growth in cases where the strengthening of the child's growth had already begun, so that this effect would appear plainly and without any secondary phenomena. As the scientists said, the operation was a matter of "repairing what had already been repaired."