I’m reminded of a passage from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Willie Wonka proposes a plan for un-shrinking Mike Teavee:
Vitamins are not always a first world solution to a third world problem. Some medications, such as blood thinners, are difficult to stabilize unless the patient eats about the same amount of vitamins every day. The easiest way to do this is to take a multi-vitamin while avoiding foods like spinach.
There’s the old joke of the doctor who ran out of vitamin B12, so he gave the patient two doses of vitamin B6.
Interesting column - I learned a lot.
As there are female priests or ministers in quite a few Protestant denominations (including my own, Episcopalianism), perhaps the word “Catholic” might be added to the end of the paragraph, “The second half of the alphabet gets even messier: the bulk of the later would-be vitamins proved not to figure significantly in human growth and consequently were stripped of their status faster than a female priest.”
Wouldn’t that be a priestess? What we have here is further evidence that Cecil, or at least Ed, grew up Roman Catholic. Back then we tended to handwave away other Christian sects as “some sort of Protestants,” giving them as much attention or respect as gnats. 
“Vitamin O goes all but unmentioned in the literature (meaning the name is available should Oprah pursue a career as a DJ).”
Funny quote! Not up there with ignorance/Corn Flakes/General Mills, nor with “carnal union with a mango,” but funny.
Understood, but no, they’re still called priests: Ordination of women in the Anglican Communion - Wikipedia
Out of curiousity would a male Catholic Priest who underwent a sex-change operation be defrocked ?
But he didn’t say “or ministers”, so the statement doesn’t apply to the “quite a few” Protestant denominations which believe in the “priesthood of all believers”.
In a manner of speaking.
Wouldn’t this fall under the prohibition on eunuch priests?
During the debate in the 70s over the ordination of women as priests in the Episcopal Church in the USA, the word “priestess” was used enough as an insult to guarantee that it would not be picked up when it actually happened, especially since feminists at the time were campaigning broadly against “-ess” and “-trix” words generally.
Answering my own question, the answer is yes, a surgically female Catholic Priest can still continue as a priest.
http://www.tgcrossroads.org/news/archive.asp?aid=599
VATICAN-TRANSSEXUALS
Jan-14-2003 (710 words) xxxi
Vatican says ‘sex-change’ operation does not change person’s gender
By John Norton Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – After years of study, the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation has sent church leaders a confidential document concluding that “sex-change” procedures do not change a person’s gender in the eyes of the church.
…
Depends on what you mean by “continue as a priest”. Ordination is one of those sacraments that’s said to leave an indelible mark on the soul: Once a priest, always a priest. But just because you’re a priest doesn’t mean you’re a priest in good standing: You can still be defrocked, which means the Church is officially saying that you’re no longer allowed to conduct Masses (you can, as a priest, but you’re not allowed to), and you won’t be given any parish. I imagine that a priest who got a sex-change operation would be defrocked, just like a priest who gets married.
I’m asking anyway. Etiquette falls before the fight against ignorance.
Also, what makes a vitamin part of the b-complex vitamin group?
When vitamins were first being discovered as dietary shortcomings, the first dietary shortcoming discovered was by a Dutch man, Christiaan Eijkmann, who discovered that rats fed white rice developed beriberi, but rats fed brown rice did not. White rice is brown rice that has had the branny skin rubbed off. When sick chickens who were fed a diet of white rice had the polishings from brown rice added back to their diet, they got well.
Another scientist, Adolphe Vorderman, confirmed that a white rice diet in humans made them ill but a brown rice diet did not.
When Gowland Hopkins discovered a component of milk that prevented rickets, he labeled it “vitamin A” and brown rice polishings as “vitamin B”. His vitamin A was later renamed vitamin D.
Vitamin B is just the elements from brown rice polishings. Later they were subsequently separated further into individual chemicals, and given various names, and assigned numbers as part of the vitamin B group.