The A.B.-Z. of our own nutrition

April 26th, 1902.

REPORT OF A PLAN FOR THE INSTITUTION OF AN INTERNATIONAL INQUIRY INTO THE SUBJECT OF HUMAN NUTRITION

[Sir Michael Foster’s “Note” (preceding) and Professor Chittenden’s article in the Popular Science Monthly (following), which form a part of this book, show a common want of exact knowledge relative to human nutrition not at all creditable to human intelligence at the beginning of the twentieth century; but they both offer hope of relief from this discreditable stigma in systematic study of the question. For this purpose an international inquiry was proposed, a plan was drawn up under advice of Sir Michael Foster, and the matter was given to the writer to promote by the best means available.

The Carnegie Institution seemed, at the time, the most likely supporter of such a scheme; but owing to an embarrassment of applications for support of American science needs, it was considered best not to attempt any foreign or even international benefaction, for the present at least, and hence other means of furthering the inquiry were sought.

The invitation of Professor Chittenden to repeat the demonstration of food-economy made by the author and Dr. Van Someren at Cambridge, England, of which Sir Michael Foster’s “Note” treats, at the laboratories of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, led to the discovery that New Haven already possessed an equipment suitable for the inquiry much more complete than the plan Professor Foster had outlined as being desirable.

At Yale were found not only a very well-adapted chemico-physiological laboratory with some of the most active and scientifically respected research talent of the world in charge, but the laboratory stood only three minutes away from one of the best furnished gymnasiums in the world, under a director who is an M. D. of twenty years' experience, as well as a famous athlete and author of an athletic manual. It so happened that this gymnasium was especially suited for assisting in a research into the very causes of human efficiency, or lack of it, which nutrition is supposed to affect.

Only forty minutes from New Haven by rail,--a distance not greater, as measured by time separation, than from one side of London to the other,--at Middletown, Conn., stood also the recently completed calorimeter of Professors Atwater and Benedict ready for making a calorimetric trial-balance measurement of metabolism attained and chemically estimated in the tests at New Haven.

After the Yale demonstration, of which Professor Chittenden’s article, previously mentioned, treats, the author responded to an invitation from Professor Atwater and submitted himself to a 32-hour confinement in the calorimeter for confirmation of the results obtained at New Haven.

This experience in the calorimeter at Middletown was very significant and instructive. The author was the first test-subject used in the newly completed calorimeter. The oxygen-measuring attachment of Dr. Benedict that completed the apparatus and gave a complete trial balance of the metabolism of the subject under examination was as yet untried, but it proved its integrity within the fraction of one per cent and registered as accurately as necessary for all practical purposes. So much for the machine; but it measured a result which is of the greatest importance to the human race. The author had just demonstrated the possibility of running the human machine on half the heat, on one-third of the fuel, and with only one-tenth of the waste, as represented by the waste, or ashes of digestion. Not only was this done while in pursuit of the ordinary activity of present-day life, but under stress of 'Varsity-Crew exercise, as reported by Professor Chittenden and Dr. Anderson. Had this demonstration been made relative to steam engines or electrical motors, the information would have been revolutionary in establishing new values for things industrial and commercial.

Its significance relative to human profitable possibilities is even more important than if related to steam or electrical power. The possibility of economy in the human machine gives also a hope of immunity from the common diseases which now afflict mankind.

The trial of the calorimeter as a measuring machine and the trial balance of the economic metabolism which the author had attained by five years of careful attention to the natural requirements of nutrition were epoch-making events coincidently related, and for them the author here makes this distinguished claim--not on account of any accomplishment of himself, but as a promise of great possibilities for human betterment.

Here follows a reproduction of the plan just referred to, with fac-simile of the signatures of the distinguished physiologists who approved the plan and consented to serve as “Assessors.” To this list should have been added the name of Professor Ozawa, professor of physiology at the University of Tokio, Japan; but time and distance did not permit gaining the required understanding and assent. Professor Ozawa’s connection with the inquiry would make it not only international but interhemispherical and interracial as well, and this possibility of scientific coördination and coöperation is typical of the harmonising wave that is fast enveloping the earth for the benefit of mankind.

I give a copy of the document entire, with estimates of cost, etc., just as it was originally drawn and intended only as a trial suggestion, to be modified by circumstances.—HORACE FLETCHER.]

PROPOSAL TO FOUND AN INTERNATIONAL LABORATORY OF RESEARCH FOR THE STUDY OF NUTRITION IN ALL ITS ASPECTS

Notwithstanding the enormous development which the study of Experimental Physiology has undergone during the last half-century, and the constant multiplication of physiological laboratories fitted in a manner which enables them to be used as places of research as well as of instruction in the methods of physiological inquiry, it has appeared to many physiologists that a great need remains to be supplied by the establishment of an International Laboratory of Research, devoted primarily, if not exclusively, to the investigation of problems connected with the Nutrition of the Animal, and particularly of Human Organisms,--studies particularly, and in the first instance, from the point of view of the relation of the food consumed by the animal body to its output of energy, either in the form of heat or mechanical work.

The reason for establishing such a laboratory, available for the use of investigations of all nations, is to be found in the fact that the researches which are now called for, in order to place upon a firm foundation our knowledge of food and its relations to the activity of the organism, necessitates an assemblage of apparatus and machinery so specialised and so costly that they are not to be found collected together even in the best equipped of the physiological laboratories of Europe or America, which all subserve in the first instance the purposes of systematic instruction. Undoubtedly, unquestionably, certain of the great and costly appliances of research are to be found in particular laboratories, as, for instance, in those of Berlin, Munich, Paris, and Turin, but there certainly exists no laboratory in which the investigator can find assembled under one roof all the specially fitted chemical, physical, and even bacteriological appliances which he may need to employ in the investigation of the Phenomena of Nutrition.

A more precise conception of the nature of the proposed laboratory may be formed if reference is made to certain groups of appliances which such a laboratory should possess and be able to place at the disposal of the scientific men coming to it for facilities which may be denied them at home. It should possess a complete set of respiration chambers of various types, and especially should be provided with the “Atwater Respiration Apparatus;” the most perfect appliances for the analyses of gases should be available; it should be provided with the most perfect calorimeters of various types, both for the investigation of the calorimetric value of the foods experimented on, and for the determination of the heat produced by man or by the lower animals,--the subjects of observation. The laboratory should possess, besides, the most perfect appliances for the measurement of work done by man and by animals (“ergostat,” “ergograph”), and a set of balances of the highest perfection capable of weighing with accuracy very heavy loads. These characteristic appliances of a laboratory specially designed for placing our knowledge of Animal Nutrition on a thoroughly sound basis must be superadded to the ordinary means for pursuing with success researches in Pure Organic, Physiological, and Physical Chemistry, as well as in Bacteriology.

OUTLINE OF THE PROPOSED SUBJECTS OF RESEARCH TO BE UNDERTAKEN IN THE PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL LABORATORY

1. To determine with greater precision than has yet been possible the efficiency of the animal organism considered as a machine in which potential energy of the organic constituents of food is converted into mechanical work. The knowledge that we already possess has shown that in the animal we have an engine infinitely more efficient as a utiliser of the potential energy supplied to it than any appliance yet constructed, or which we can, in the present state of physical science, construct. A still more precise study of the actual efficiency of the animal as a whole, as well as of certain of the vital organs which are mainly concerned in mechanical work, and a more thorough investigation of the processes whereby--for instance, in the muscles--the potential energy of stored-up chemical compounds is, as appears certain, directly converted into mechanical work, is not only desirable in the interest of the ultimate object of the work of the Laboratory, but possesses a high degree of theoretical interest, even from the point of view of Pure Physics. To sum up: One of the first objects of the investigations to be carried out in the projected Laboratory should be “the more precise determination of the minimum transformation of energy which corresponds to mean and accurately determined conditions of the animal body, and of that of man in particular.”

2. We are acquainted with the fact that the potential energy which is utilised by the animal is supplied to it with the least wear and tear to, or strain upon, its mechanism by non-nitrogenous organic constituents of food which must belong to the groups of starches and sugars or fats, but that the continued existence of the organism demands, as an essential condition, the introduction of a certain proportion of albuminous matter. In spite of numerous very fine investigations on this subject, the yet more precise determination of the minimum quantity of the albuminous constituents which are absolutely necessary or desirable, under the most varying conditions, is eminently desirable, especially in the light of recently recorded facts, amongst which are those to be referred to under 3 (following):—