SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS 



Abstracts of Communications. 



One hundred fourteenth meeting. 



College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City, March 16, 

 IQ2I. President Wallace in the chair. 



79 (1661) 



Growth on diets containing more than ninety per cent, of protein. 



By THOMAS B. OSBORNE and LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL. 



[From the Laboratory of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment 

 Station and the Sheffield Laboratory of Physiological 

 Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven.] 



Although it has been demonstrated that a carnivorous animal 

 can be kept alive and maintained in activity for considerable 

 periods on an exclusive diet of meat it is not known whether growth 

 as well as maintenance can proceed on a regimen entirely free 

 from both fats and carbohydrates. Hammarsten has stated that 

 omnivora and herbivora cannot survive on such a ration. The 

 few experiments on record in relation to this problem have without 

 exception been conducted on a wrong plan, the food mixtures 

 being inadequare in respect to one or more essential factors. 

 Our successful experiences in growing rats on foods extremely poor 

 in fats 1 and in carbohydrates 2 respectively encouraged us to test 

 diets containing only minimal quantities of both. The mixtures 

 included protein 95 per cent., inorganic salts 5 per cent., along 

 with a supply of vitamins A and B in the form of tablets of alfalfa 

 (0.4 gm.) and dried brewery yeast (0.2 gm.) daily. On such diets, 

 when casein furnished the protein component, animals have al- 

 ready grown to three times their weight at the beginning of the 



1 Osborne and Mendel, J. Biol. Chem., 1920, xlv, 145. 



* Osborne and Mendel, Proc. Soc. Exper. Biol, and Med., 1921, xviii, 136. 



167 



