302 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



NUTRITION. 



Osborne, T. B., and L. B. Mendel, New Haven, Connecticut. Continua- 

 tion and extension of work on vegetable proteins. (For previous reports see 

 Year Books Nos. 3-16.) 



Many questions calling upon the science of nutrition for an answer 

 have been raised as a consequence of the world war involving the 

 health and maintenance of great groups of people. Fortunately the 

 outcome of the investigations conducted for several years, under pre- 

 vious grants to us, made it logical to apply the results already obtained 

 to a solution of many of these questions. For some time, therefore, 

 we had been relating the findings of our purely scientific researches 

 more and more to solutions of some of the problems of nutrition met 

 with in daily life. Since this country entered the war we have naturally 

 been impelled to give this trend of our researches fuller play, so that 

 they might contribute as far as possible to a helpful solution of some 

 of the impending problems. 



In doing this we are further encouraged by the faith that after the 

 war what we are now learning of the essentials of nutrition may be 

 perhaps even more useful than during its progress. The enormous 

 number of people who are already suffering from malnutrition is 

 likely to increase steadily until the world will be threatened with the 

 diseases which invariably follow in the wake of famine. More wide- 

 spread recognition of the fact that specific dietary deficiencies are 

 often the factors which lead to the development of some of these 

 diseases can hardly prove otherwise than helpful in dealing with them 

 successfully. 



Physicians, especially in regions affected by the war, are reporting 

 cases of unusual eye disease among children who had been fed largely 

 on skimmed milk or otherwise restricted diets. This affection of the 

 eyes appears to be similar to the condition recognized in rats by Knapp 

 in 1908, but which in 1913 we first associated with diets deficient in 

 the fat-soluble vitamine. By substituting whole milk for skinomed 

 milk or by administering cod-liver oil these children are reported to 

 be cured as readily as our rats are cured by adding the fat-soluble 

 vitamine to their diet. Observations on animals living upon diets 

 deficient in fat-soluble vitamine have thus strengthened the evidence 

 of important interrelations between diet and disease. 



It is gratifying to find in current physiological literature the wide- 

 spread acceptance of various facts relating to the relative nutritive 

 value of the proteins, the role of the various amino-acids and their 

 relation to the protein minimum, the part played by the vitamine 

 properties of food substances and their relation to disease conditions, 

 the highly specific antigenic properties of isolated proteins, etc., which 

 we have dwelt upon in previous reports. Many of our findings and 



