406 ISIDOR GREENWALD 



their power of endurance in a number of physical tests. The experi- 

 ments were not well controlled but they showed that healthy young men 

 could live in an apparently perfectly healthy condition for at least two 

 months on a diet containing only 0.97 grain protein per kilo per day. 



McCay. The advocacy of a low protein dietary was severely attacked 

 by McCay, who based his criticisms chiefly upon the results of his experi- 

 ence in India. McCay found that Bengalis, as their incomes increased, 

 partook to a larger and larger extent of protein food. The poorer classes, 

 who were also in poorer health, subsisted chiefly on rice, with only small 

 additions of meat, fish, milk or eggs. Some of his data and others calcu- 

 lated from them are included in Table IV. McCay emphasized the poor 

 physical condition of those whose diets contained little protein as compared 

 with that of those who, like the wealthier Bengalis, the Sikhs and others, 

 ate more protein. 



Perhaps the most striking of all McCay's studies is one upon Bengali 

 and Anglo-Indian and Eurasian students at the same college. The for- 

 mer received a diet furnishing 3190 calories but only 67 grams protein, 

 the latter, only 2822 calories but 95 grams protein. The average weight 

 of the Bengali students was 54 kilos and they gained very little (less than 

 one kilo) during their stay at the school, in spite of a gain of 1.5 to 2.5 

 inches in height. There was no increase in the girth of the chest. The 

 Anglo-Indian and Eurasian students, however, gained an average of 8.2 

 kilos during the three years and their chest girths were increased by an 

 average of one inch. While racial peculiarities may have had something 

 to do with the result, it seems probable the difference in food played an 

 important part. 



However, since McCay's work was published, there has been an in- 

 creasing recognition of the importance of, not only the amount of protein, 

 but its kind, the nature of the constituent amino-acids, and of the signifi- 

 cance of other dietary constituents. The diet of the Bengali (students and 

 others) may well be criticized as containing not too little protein but pos- 

 sibly not enough of certain amino-acids, or even more likely, as being de- 

 ficient in certain vitamines, or protective substances, or in one or more 

 inorganic constituents. 



Hindhede. In a series of experiments designed to determine the mini- 

 mum nitrogen intake required to maintain equilibrium, Hindhede ( c} (d) 

 (1913, 1914) succeeded in maintaining two men for considerable periods 

 on diets containing rather less protein than those employed by Chittenden. 

 The foods he used consisted of potatoes, or bread, with butter or margarin, 

 with or without the addition of onions, plums, rhubarb or strawberries. 

 The onions helped to make the large quantities of potatoes more palatable. 

 The other additions acted as vehicles for sugar, thus permitting a reduction 

 in the amount of bread. The nitrogen they contained did not appear in 

 the urine but in the f eces. Sometimes, indeed, the addition . of plums. 





