242 E. V. McCOLLUM 



less that due to lack of sufficient food. It is amazing to one who peruses 

 the literature relating to nutrition during the last century to note how 

 those physiologists who concerned themselves with the study of the nutri- 

 tion of man or animals, failed to familiarize themselves with the effects 

 of faulty diets of different kinds such as were producing scurvy, beri-beri 

 and rickets in different parts of the world. The early chemists accom- 

 plished little because they tried to study foods by chemical methods. 

 The physiologists accepted the view that the most important lines of in- 

 vestigation were energy values, digestibility, the optimum intake of pro- 

 tein and the extent to which foods of one class could replace those of 

 another in the diet. It was not until recent years that an effort was made 

 to determine by experiments on animals, the quality of foodstuffs, the 

 factors which are indispensable in the diet, and the optimum conditions 

 of nutrition which best support well-being. 



A few years ago it was considered sufficient to carefully audit the food 

 records to see that a satisfactory amount of energy and of protein were 

 assured. To-day the guardians of the health of large groups of persons, as 

 well as the mothers of households, are concerning themselves more with 

 the question as to whether they are insuring those under their care suf- 

 ficient amounts of "vitamines." The energetic manufacturers of pharma- 

 ceuticals are promoting in a more or less "ethical" way the sale of prep- 

 arations said to contain generous amounts of the newly appreciated food 

 factors, with alluring advertising matter telling what they are good for. 

 Every physician should understand that this is quackery of the same 

 grade as the fake remedies against which the American Medical Asso- 

 ciation has waged such effective warfare for many years. There is no 

 place in therapy for concentrated preparations of "vitamines," even as- 

 suming that they are what they are purported to be. It is easily pos- 

 sible, by proper selection of foods, to prepare a diet which contains sev- 

 eral times the actual needs of the body for any or all of these food sub- 

 stances. It is the duty of the specialist in nutrition to emphasize that 

 the garden and the market, not the drug store, should supply us with these 

 protective substances. This is the view that will ultimately prevail, 

 but it will require time to establish it because of the prospects of money- 

 making by the sale of this new type of remedy. 



The ideal to be attained in nutrition during the period of growth is 

 to afford the organism an optimum food supply to enable it to develop 

 in a perfectly normal manner uninterruptedly, during both prenatal 

 and postnatal life. This condition is seldom realized. Development 

 is temporarily interfered with by diseases due to infection, which it is 

 scarcely possible to escape during childhood. These impediments, as 

 well as disturbances resulting from mechanical factors, and those in which 

 there is disturbance of function of the endocrin glands, lie outside the 

 scope of this chapter. Our discussion will be limited to those conditions 



