506 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Atwater, at Middletown, Conn., in cooijeration with this Department, 

 the work being continued under his successor, Dr. F. G. Benedict. 

 This joint effort has been directed to increasing the efficiency and 

 ])recision of the respiration calorimeter, previously developed with 

 the aid of this Department, and especially to providing the oxygen 

 annex, making it a closed-circuit apparatus. 



So great has been tlie interest of the Institution in this work 

 and its belief in the possibilities open to it, that it has decided to 

 establish it as one of its permanent lines of research and to provide 

 a special laboratory for it, as has already been done for a few other 

 lines. The nutrition laboratory will probably be located in New 

 York, in connection with one of the large hospitals, and Avill be de- 

 voted particularly to inquiries in relation to medicine, physiology, 

 and hygiene. The fitting up of the apparatus and laboratory w^ill be 

 in charge of Dr. Benedict, who will direct the subsequent investi- 

 gation. 



There are many problems concerned with nutrition in disease and 

 convalescence, and with the energy output and hence the food require- 

 ments of the body under various pathological conditions, as Avell 

 as many questions of ventilation and other branches of hygiene, 

 to the study of which the respiration calorimeter is especially 

 adapted. Such questions have a Avide interest and are of far-reaching- 

 importance, and as the Department's researches have developed there 

 have been urgent requests that they be taken up. They are, however, 

 distinctly separate from the investigations of the nutritive value 

 of agi-icultural food products, to which the Department's efforts 

 have been directed, and have seemed rather to belong to some other 

 agency than one working primarily iri tlie interests of agriculture 

 and looking to annual appropriations for continuation. 



It is especially gratifying, therefore, to all interested in the subject 

 of nutrition in its broadest aspects, that the Carnegie Institution 

 should have recognized its importance and decided to provide for it 

 as one of its special departments of research. It is thus given greater 

 ]:)ermanency and greater freedom in scope than could be the case under 

 legislative approjjriation, and the possibilities are opened for extend- 

 ing the investigation into theoretical lines where it is much needed. 



Especially is this departure gratifying to those Avho have been 

 interested in the nutrition investigations under the Department, for 

 it is a direct outgrowth of the latter's work which has led up to and 

 made it possible. The development of the respiration calorimeter 

 under the Department's cooperation, and the fundamental inquiries 

 Avhich have been conducted with it for scA^eral years past, have stinui- 

 lated research in this field; and as the apparatus has remained the 



