NUTRITION lOI 



ploration and discovery. When, today, we complain that our soup is not 

 properly seasoned, that our melons are not sweet enough, when we com- 

 plain of the dryness of our grapefruit or of the sogginess of the sweet 

 potato, let us, instead, give thanks to those unsung heros of the past whose 

 exploits have made it possible for us to sit each day at dinners such as were 

 never dreamed of by the epicures and gluttons, kings and emperors of 

 bygone days. 



>>><■<<■ 



FADS, FANCIES AND FALLACIES IN 

 ADULT DIETS * 



RUSSELL M. WILDER 



Many years ago, as a student in Heidelberg, I read an essay by a famous 

 physiologist. It dealt with the borders of the realm of science. The domain 

 of scientific knowledge was symbolized by an ancient kingdom. There 

 was a central capital; a limited region roundabout was well ordered and 

 habitable, and surrounding this latter was a dense forest. This forest was 

 haunted by goblins. Some of these were only fantasies, figments of the 

 imagination of the inhabitants of the cultivated part of the land; some 

 in truth were mischievous demons. A number of highways radiated from 

 the capital, but although they were conceived with the military purpose 

 of ultimate extension to the borders, they mostly ended where the forest 

 began, and beyond their endings few men dared to venture. 



Consider the effect on this kingdom of science that came from the 

 pioneer efforts of Louis Pasteur. The path he blazed through the forest 

 of ignorance has been widened and straightened by the scientists who 

 followed him, and now has been converted into a highway which is paved 

 and illuminated as far as the frontier. Mankind thus has been protected 

 from most of those diseases caused by parasites. In consequence, the 

 pestilences of the past no longer haunt us, childbed fever has lost its ter- 

 rors, and the mortality of infants has fallen dramatically. In consequence 

 also, surgeons operate safely, and public health campaigns are ordered 

 with such assurance that most of the so-called infectious diseases in time 

 undoubtedly will be eradicated from the earth. I have in mind such diseases 

 as yellow fever, typhus fever, hookworm disease, tuberculosis and syphilis. 



Sometime after Pasteur another path was blazed through the jungle, 

 and this now is being widened, straightened and lighted into a highway. 

 You have heard the story of Eijkmann, in the Dutch East Indies, who 

 observed the weakened legs of chickens fed with polished rice and showed 



* Presented before the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of the Sigma Xi, Scientific 

 Research Society of America, February i8, 1938. Reprinted from the Sigina Xi Quar- 

 terly with the permission of the Society of Sigma Xi. Copyright 1938. 



