Obituary: Gladys Reid

Reid received an OBE for her work in animal health.

Gladys Reid, OBE, agricultural researcher. Died age 92.

The woman credited with finding the connection between zinc and facial eczema died last Friday, a month before her 92nd birthday.

Born in 1914, Gladys Reid was a member of a third-generation farming family in Tauranga. She trained as a dental nurse and in 1939 married local-body executive George Reid. Facial eczema, a disease in grazing animals caused by a toxic fungus which grows in pasture, was rampant in the autumn of 1948, when Gladys and George bought a farm in Te Aroha. The misery and suffering of the animals concerned her greatly, so George told her to do something about it.

She read very widely, ordering books and journals from overseas. Reid began treating her stock with niacin, a B vitamin, and in 1959 discovered papers describing zinc as the co-factor of this vitamin. From her dental training she was familiar with zinc oxide paste as an anti-inflammatory agent.

She began administering zinc sulphate to calves sheltering under hedges. Unable to catch one calf, she threw the zinc into a trough, and from then on this was her preferred method of administration. Some farmers still do this today.

In 1969 Reid purchased the neighbouring farm, which allowed her to test the zinc theory by dosing only one property. When facial eczema hit that season, milk production on the untreated block fell 30 per cent. Production on the treated farm fell only 9 per cent, with no clinical eczema.

Until 1974, she believed the eczema was caused by zinc deficiency, but in that year she found a paper outlining how high doses of zinc would protect the liver from damage by toxins.

At the Ruakura Farmers Conference in 1975 Reid received a standing ovation. Her work was well received overseas but local scientists remained cautious. In that year farmers were warned that zinc in water troughs was toxic to stock.

In 1981 official advice was still to spray toxic pastures with fungicides. Then a huge outbreak of facial eczema occurred. The following year zinc treatment was officially recommended for facial eczema prevention. Reid received an OBE in 1983. That year she was invited to an international nutrition conference in America, where she spoke about the role of zinc in liver protection.

In 1981 Reid turned her attention to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). She published more than 20 papers in the British journal Medical Hypotheses.

She is survived by two sons, nine grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.