August 1, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



99 



served in laboratory experiments upon men 

 who have taken large quantities of meat. 



Furthermore, it would be interesting to 

 know how much milk is required every day 

 for children of various ages. It is not known 

 to-day how much milk must be taken to pre- 

 vent rickets developing in children. 



It is also unknown how much food a child 

 should be given at different ages, or whether 

 a boy needs more additional food in order to 

 do a certain amount of work than his father 

 would need to accomplish the same amount of 

 work. It may be that the growing muscles 

 of a boy are not as efS.cient machines as those 

 of an adult. 



Then there is a vast field in the study of 

 the psychology of food. The Jews are told as 

 children that pork is unfit for food and they 

 rarely conquer their repugnance to it. The 

 English are told as children that maize is food 

 for pigs, and though Americans eat maize 

 bread with pleasure and have recently done 

 so to a huge extent in order to make possible 

 exports of wheat to Europe, the English per- 

 sist in their unfounded prejudice against it. 

 I once had a diabetic patient who was one of 

 my own students and he had heard me say in 

 my lectures that the sugar levulose was the 

 only sugar that could be used by the body in 

 that disease. When 100 grams of levulose 

 were given to him he was apparently greatly 

 benefited. His strength improved, as meas- 

 ured with an ergograph, and all his classmates 

 remarked upon the wonderful change in his 

 spirits. Alas, none of the sugar was used in 

 his body and all the apparent benefit was 

 derived from mental suggestion. In this little 

 story lies the essence of much sincere self 

 deception, as well as the foundation of danger- 

 ous frauds, such as are exploited by makers of 

 patent medicines. It is also evident that the 

 testimony to the effect that 500 grams of meat 

 are desirable for a soldier may rest on an ex- 

 tremely shaky foundation. 



A laboratory of human nutrition should 

 have at its disposal a close statistical analysis 

 of the available food supply of the country 

 and should be able to advise the government 

 so that a sufficient quantity of suitable food 



may be always available. Thus, chemical 

 analysis of the food products, which would 

 show approximately the quantity of food ma- 

 terials obtainable from any given source, such 

 as maize or hogs or cattle, should each year be 

 determined. 



There should also be an investigation into 

 the food resources of the country so that they 

 may be used in the best interests of human 

 beings. For example, it is wrong to feed 

 bread grains to pigs when human beings need 

 them more. 



If these four laboratories, British, French, 

 Italian and American, be established, the di- 

 rectors should meet together annually and dis- 

 cuss results. And it would be wise to arrange 

 for the exchange of trained assistants. 



It may be said that to build a nutrition lab- 

 oratory would be too costly for the state. In 

 this connection it should be remembered that 

 in Germany for the past eighty years, even in 

 times of her greatest poverty, money has 

 always been spent for laboratories accompanied 

 by recognition, of her scientific men, and these 

 things made her rich and powerful more 

 rapidly than culture lessened her inherent 

 barbarism. Before gold was discovered in 

 Alaska and in South Africa, I heard a pro- 

 fessor of geology in ISTew York say that the 

 geological formation in these two sections was 

 such that gold probably existed there. Other 

 people got the gold that the scientist knew 

 about. Take another illustration. Biffen, of 

 Cambridge, England, developed a new brand 

 of wheat called "Little Joss." In 1913 this 

 brand of wheat was sown and it produced four 

 bushels per acre more wheat than any other 

 variety. The gain to the farmers that one 

 year alone amounted to $1,000,000, while the 

 laboratory in which the work was done cost 

 $200,000 to build. It is probable that the 

 work of a nutrition laboratory especially de- 

 signed for investigations into the food require- 

 ments of man could be carried on at an ex- 

 pense of less than one hundredth part of one 

 per cent, of the cost of the food supply of each 

 of the Allied Kations, and if the director of 

 such a laboratory were a man of broad vision 

 and creative imagination, the laboratory would 

 be certain to add to the knowledge of the 



