The Vitamin E Story: The Medical Memoirs of Evan Shute

Robin V.H. Bellamy was an editor and bibliographer in Vancouver.

Evan Shute (1905-1978) was a Canadian physician who spent most of his life trying to persuade the medical profession to accept his claims for the therapeutic value of vitamin E. These claims were based on evidence that the profession did not trust and could not duplicate — evidence such as the results of small-scale, uncontrolled studies and patients’ testimonials. Dr. Shute found it almost impossible to get his work published in major medical journals or to be allowed to present it at medical conferences; still he remained adamant that vitamin E could be used not only in gynecology and obstetrics, but also for the treatment of burns and cardiovascular disease. In 1948 he and his brother Wilfrid, a heart specialist, established the private Shute Medical Clinic (which still exists today) in London, Ontario, where they treated patients with vitamin E.

Because the effectiveness of vitamin E continues to be controversial, a book about that vitamin and one of its earliest proponents is potentially of considerable interest and value. Unfortunately, this book falls short of that potential. The information in The Vitamin E Story is rendered less usable by the book’s inadequate glossary and lack of an index. Nor is this a book one would wish to “dip into” to recover bits of information. Although Dr. Shute can be lively and genial when presenting an anecdote or referring to the few people he liked (notably his family and financial backers), these memoirs cannot be called engaging, for several reasons. Much of the text is little more than a list of the names, dates, and places that figured in the career of Dr. Shute. Many of these names belong either to his detractors or to men who professed to support him but refused to speak up or shell out when he most wanted their help, and when he discusses these people Shute’s tone is unmistakably bitter, even vengeful. The autobiographical verses that preface each chapter were published in Shute’s lifetime under a pseudonym.

Whatever one’s sympathies for those who propose alternatives to traditional medicine, Evan Shute’s own memoirs reveal the weaknesses in his work and the blindness of his self-confidence.