EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. IX. No. 3. 



Few people, even specialists, outside of Eussia have a just concep- 

 tion of the amount and quality of scientific investigation which is being 

 carried on in that country. In the course of a compilation of the results 

 of experiments on metabolism in man and animals, which has been made 

 in this Office, our attention has been forcibly called to the amount of 

 investigation in Russia on this subject and the inaccessibility of the 

 published accounts of the work. While occasional references to these 

 investigations were found in the English, German, and French abstract 

 journals and yearbooks, the Russian work was not found to be followed 

 up in the same systematic and complete manner that the work of other 

 countries is. The difficulty of tracing out this work is increased by the 

 fact that quite a portion of the papers are published as dissertations, 

 and are not noticed in current scientific journals. The original publi- 

 cations were obtained and abstracted, and these called attention to 

 other papers, so that eventually several hundred more or less detailed 

 experiments on metabolism were found which were not described in 

 any work or journal ordinarily accessible. It was found that in many 

 lines of research on the nutrition of man and animals exceedingly inter- 

 esting and valuable work had been in progress in Russia for several 

 years. It is quite remarkable at this day that the work of such emi- 

 nent scientists, in which there is quite general interest, should have 

 remained as a sealed book to most of the civilized world. It empha- 

 sizes the desirability of our having more definite knowledge of the sci- 

 entific work which is being carried on in Russia, and has already called 

 the attentiou of Russian scientists to the limited extent to which much 

 of their work reaches the outside world. 



During the past summer Prof. W. O. Atwater visited the universities 

 and other institutions of research in Russia for the purpose of looking 

 more closely into the nature and extent of their investigations, espe- 

 cially in nutrition. Professor Atwater attended the International Medi- 

 cal Congress at Moscow in August, and visited other places in Russia 

 and Finland, where abundant opportunity was afforded him to come in 

 contact with the investigators and familiarize himself with the labora- 

 tories and the general character of the investigations being carried on. 

 The results of some of his observations are outlined in the following 

 statements furnished by him. 



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