ry2 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



tendency of medical science during the past few years. This 

 movement has led to the publication of many general works on 

 diet, which have value for Africa as for all other parts of the 

 world; for example the League of Nations' publication on nutri- 

 tion and public health by Burnet and Aykroyd (1935) and the 

 volume on dietetics in warm climates by Leitch (1930). The 

 Pan- African Health Conferences in South Africa in 1932 and 

 1935 paid particular attention to nutritional problems, as men- 

 tioned in the last of the general principles of rural health and 

 hygiene (p. 570). For some years a committee of the International 

 Institute of African Languages and Cultures, consisting of anthro- 

 pologists and other scientists, has been elaborating plans for 

 research on African native diets. A special number of the Insti- 

 tute's journal, Africa (April 1936), was devoted to the subject, 

 and a separate publication by the Institute (1937) contains a 

 full bibliography together with tables showing the composition 

 of African foods compiled by the Imperial Bureau of Animal 

 Nutrition. In 1936 a dispatch from the Secretary of State (Colonial 

 Office 1936b) to all the colonies and dependencies, invited 

 particular attention to these problems, and a special committee 

 of the Economic Advisory Council was formed to survey the 

 present state of knowledge in the Colonial Empire and advise on 

 measures to promote the discovery and application of knowledge 

 in this field. 



A Dietetics Committee of the Economic Advisory Council had 

 already inaugurated extensive researches in Kenya. The work 

 was made possible by grants from the Empire Marketing Board 

 to enable research officers from the Rowett Institute at Aberdeen 

 to work in East Africa in collaboration with the Kenya medical 

 department. From 1927 until 1931 a series of technical papers 

 by Kelly, Henderson, Foster, and Harvey were published and 

 have been summarized in special reports of the Dietetics Com- 

 mittee. In 1 93 1, Sir John Orr, Director of the Rowett Institute, 

 and Dr. J. L. Gilks, late Director of Medical and Sanitary Services 

 in Kenya, who had collaborated in the field, published a report 

 (1931) on the nutrition of the Kikuyu and Masai, in which were 

 embodied all the principal results by other workers. 



The two tribes selected represent the two .ends of the nutritional 



