908 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 963 



other members of these boards are college 

 men I do not know, as this information is 

 merely accidental, but they constitute a 

 goodly company. It is the judgment and the 

 criticism of these men that this station must 

 first reckon with, and I haye found them en- 

 tirely competent to judge of the scientific re- 

 liability and soundness of our experiments as 

 well as of their practical significance; nor is 

 it necessary to publish sub rosa the better 

 product of our laboratories. 



These men are selected not by the station 

 itself, but by the farmers' organizations of 

 the state, and it is fair to assume that as time 

 goes on the men nearest the station and its 

 work will be college trained. In a few days 

 this university will graduate nearly a hun- 

 dred men from a four years' scientific course 

 in agriculture. By the ratio of the past, fifty- 

 five per cent, of these graduates will go at 

 once to their farms, where, with even a larger 

 number of men who have not fully completed 

 the course and with a still larger number grad- 

 uated from other colleges, they will constitute 

 a rapidly increasing constituency trained not 

 only in agriculture as a business, but in scien- 

 tific methods of study. It is this class of men 

 and the colleges which trained them that are in 

 truth covered by what Dr. Pearl denominates 

 as a scientifically uneducated and uncritical 

 constituency. 



In this state, and in others so far as my ob- 

 servation goes, since the station started a 

 quarter of a century ago, the uneducated and 

 uncritical farmers simply ignore the station 

 and all it says. They do not count one way or 

 the other in its policy, nor do they constitute 

 or even characterize its constituency. 



E. Davenport 



Univeesity of Illinois 



does a low-protein diet produce racial 

 inferiority ? 



To the Editor of Science: The argument 

 usually advanced against the adoption of the 

 " low-protein " diet plan is that the races prac- 

 tising it, when compared with those employ- 

 ing a protein-rich dietary, show in general 



some points of physical inferiority or lack 

 energy, aggressiveness or courage. To this it 

 has been replied that the diet is the result, 

 rather than the cause, of such racial charac- 

 teristics, but by the writers of most books on 

 nutrition and related subjects, both scientific 

 and sensational, this reply has been either 

 overlooked or regarded as inadequate. 



As there are no doubt many people who 

 could be benefited by the adoption of a low- 

 protein diet, judging from the results of the 

 studies by Chittenden and others, but who 

 hesitate to try it because of uncertainty as to 

 its possible unfavorable effects, it would seem 

 that the results of new investigations bearing 

 upon the matter should be given wider pub- 

 licity than their publication in the technical 

 journals usually affords. Accordingly, the 

 present note is offered to call attention to 

 recent work which apparently tends to weaken 

 the above argument in the cases of two of the 

 countries often used as examples of its appli- 

 cation, namely, Japan and India. 



The disease called beri-beri, a multiple in- 

 flammation of the nerves, which is prevalent 

 in most oriental countries, though also known 

 among the fishermen of Newfoundland and 

 Labrador, but which has been most extensively 

 studied in Japan, long bafiling explanation, 

 has frequently been brought forward as evi- 

 dence of the insufficiency of the low-protein 

 diet. The cause of the disease has now been 

 discovered, and found to have no relation to 

 the deficiency of the diet in proteins in the 

 usual sense. For some time it had been 

 known that the use of unhuUed grains instead 

 of those from which the bran was completely 

 removed would prevent the disease, and fur- 

 ther, that the bran itself contained some prin- 

 ciple which would cure many cases that had 

 not progressed too far, but these facts, based 

 chiefly on experiments on animals, were dis- 

 counted by those who wished to uphold the 

 protein theory. 



Finally, however, three Japanese investiga- 

 tors' have succeeded in isolating from rice 



' Suzuki, Shamimura and Odake, Biochemische 

 Zeitschrift, XLIII., 89. 



