Pauling (Linus)

Autograph manuscript signed ('Linus Pauling'), featuring some comments on Irwin Stone's work "The Healing Factor: Vitamin C against Disease and States" and reading "Irwin Stone is a biochemist, now retired, who developed a great interest in vitamin C soon after it had been identified as the substance L-ascorbic acid, a derivative of the sugar glucose, in 1932. Over a period of forty years he collected information about vitamin C from the scientific and medical literature, and also carried out some investigations in his own laboratory…..he pointed out that most animals manufacture vitamin C in amounts (converted to the body weight of an adult human) between 2 and 19 grams per day. From these arguments and from published accounts of the value of vitamin C in controlling various diseases, he reached the conclusion that most people are in needlessly poor health because of their low intake of vitamin C……He sent me copies of the four papers on this subject that he had published in the years 1965 to 1967 and urged me to study the effect on health of an increased intake of this vitamin. My discussions with physicians and nutritionists led me to believe that they had for the most part formed a negative opinion about the value of vitamin C because of lack of knowledge of the facts. I accordingly in 1970 wrote my book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, in which the evidence that vitamin C provides a valuable amount of protection against the common cold is discussed. In his book Irwin Stone presents his arguments for a high intake of vitamin C. He discusses the evidence…..that an increased intake of vitamin C has value in preventing and treating not only the common cold but also other viral diseases, bacterial diseases, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, allergies and asthma……in addition to its recognized uses in aiding the healing of burns, wounds, and fractural bones and helping to remove toxic substances from the body…..Irwin Stone deserves our thanks. His work, including this book, may well result in significant improvement in health and decrease in the amount of suffering caused by disease for many people", eleven pages, 4to, n.p., n.d. (c.1974).

***Irwin Stone (1907-1984) was an American Biochemist who was the first to use ascorbic acid in the food processing industry as a preservative. He then originated the hypothesis that humans require much larger amounts of vitamin C for optimal health than is necessary to prevent scurvy.