in 15 isio 



Mil 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



HELD AT PHILADELPHIA 

 FOR PROMOTING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. XLIX July, 1910 No. 195 



THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL AND MUSCULAR WORK 

 ON NUTRITIVE PROCESSES. 



By professor FRANCIS G. BENEDICT. 



Director of the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington, Boston, Massachusetts. 



(Read February 4, 1910.) 



We often wonder at the marvels of modern surgery and the 

 wonderful advances made in surgery during the past fifty years. 

 At the i^ame time we are often surprised by the fact that medicine 

 as such has not made corresponding advances and that doctors are 

 incHned now to give less medicine than ever before. In one partic- 

 ular, however, medicine has made wonderful strides, namely, in the 

 so-called "pieventive" medicine. In fact, it is a common news- 

 paper joke that ere long we will be employing our doctors and pay- 

 ing them only during such a period of time as they keep us well 

 and thus stimulate their efforts towards using preventive medicine 

 to its fullest. Pasteur, Lord Lister and Koch are household names 

 today and stand '^or wonderful series of painstaking researches 

 which have developed the fact that many diseases formerly thought 

 inevitable in the cou/se of a lifetime can, by reasonable care, in a 

 large number of cases be avoided. 



In order to bring preventive medicine to the present successful 

 stage, innumerable experiments, involving microscopy, chemistry 

 and physiology, were necessary to demonstrate in just what manner 

 these baneful organisms (for in many instances they have proved 

 to be organisms) enter into our bodies and produce diseases. Mod- 

 ern hygiene is based in large part upon the bacteriological researches 

 of these pioneers. 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. XLIX. I95 J, PRINTED JULY 2, I9IO. 



