328 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



stitutional diseases, almost where it stood in the days preceding Pasteur 

 with reference to infectious, communicable diseases. There exists an in- 

 sufficient body of exact, scientific knowledge upon which to base an ef- 

 fective program of preventive medicine. 



There are, however, certain important differences between the situation 

 today and that of seventy years ago. Quackery and spiritism will always 

 exist in some quarters, human nature being what it is; some persons will al- 

 ways carry a buckeye as a sovereign cure for "rheumatiz"; but, in general, 

 superstition has been replaced by rationalism. Techniques of investigation 

 and experimentation are vastly improved. 



Some investigators think they have found the key to the problem of de- 

 generative disease, and that the key is nutritional deficiency. 



The trail has been blazed by such groups as the Medical and Panel Com- 

 mittee of the County of Cheshire in England, and by such men as Dr. 

 Robert McCarrison in India and Dr. Price in the United States. The Com- 

 mittee embodied the results of 25 years of study in a remarkable document 

 entitled "A Medical Testament," which attributed the alarming increase 

 in illness in Cheshire County to "a life-time of wrong nutrition." ^ Dr. Mc- 

 Carrison fed rats the same diets as eaten by peoples in various parts of India 

 and in each case produced in the animals a state of health corresponding 

 to that of the people. Dr. Price carried on his researches among a large 

 number of primitive people in many parts of the world; he compared those 

 living in isolation with their blood brothers exposed to white civilization, 

 as to tooth decay and skeletal deterioration; analyzed and compared their 

 respective diets in the laboratory. 



It will be apparent to the reader that, on the surface, the problem of 

 nutritional deficiency presents a paradox. In the past century and a half the 

 peoples of North America and Western Europe have had more to eat than 

 any peoples in any time or place known to history, and yet it is within that 

 period that the physical degeneration now attributed by some authorities 

 to malnourishment has been on the increase. Prior to the year 1800, when 

 hunger was the daily companion of the average man, degenerative disease 

 is believed to have been rare. 



A number of factors doubtless enter into this. One is that the rigors of 

 life and the ravages of infectious diseases formerly killed off the weaker 

 individuals before they had a chance to acquire degenerative diseases. But 

 a factor most pertinent to this discussion is that quantity does not con- 

 stitute the only food problem or even the most grave food problem. It is 

 the quahtative, not the quantitative, deficiencies in diet that cause dental 

 caries, rickets, osteomalacia, and other degenerative diseases. A man may 

 be positively satiated with bulk and still be malnourished for lack of those 

 food elements essential to the building and maintenance of the structural 

 integrity of his body and to the development and repair of its tissues. 



* Quoted from An Agricultural Testament, by Sir Albert Howard. 



