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

by Horace Fletcher

One of the difficulties encountered was the control of test-subjects for a sufficiently long time to make conclusive estimates relative to the minimum needs of nitrogenous food in relation to the common occupations of life. Few if any volunteers, with the leisure and interest fortunately possessed by the writer, were available outside the laboratory force itself, and there were serious objections to using for test-subjects the same persons who did the chemical analyses and estimated the results.

In this dilemma the good fortune of a meeting with Surgeon-General O’Reilly of the United States Army and with General Leonard Wood—the former on his way to Madrid to attend a medical congress, and the latter en route to the Philippines to take command there—happened to the writer on the S. S. Commonwealth, on a voyage to Italy in April, 1903.

Both these officers are medical men and research enthusiasts. They had fought yellow fever together, in coöperation with martyr Dr. Major Walter Reed, in Cuba, and the fame of their success was being talked of as one of the great triumphs of pathologic, or hygienic, science at the time of the meeting.

There was ample time on the steamer to discuss a subject of such mutual and general interest, and both officers had had, in service, experiences that led them to believe that the results obtained by the writer and his colleagues were the common possibilities of all persons under right conditions of alimentation.

General O’Reilly was of the opinion that the corps he commanded could furnish intelligent and earnest test-subjects for nutrition investigation, as it did in the yellow fever case. In the yellow fever investigation privates and officers alike had volunteered to act as test-subjects, even though their lives were at stake and many had already been sacrificed. It is to their great honour, also, that they refused to receive the bounty that was offered for test-subjects, preferring to serve science and humanity freely as volunteers rather than sell themselves as experimental risks. From such material General O’Reilly was sure that capable assistants could be secured to test the not at all dangerous or disagreeable economies of nutrition that the projected inquiry wished to solve.

Armed with letters of recommendation to the President and to the Secretary of War from General Wood, and an invitation from Surgeon-General O’Reilly to call on him if coöperation on his part were desired, the writer returned to the United States and consulted with Professors Chittenden and Bowditch relative to the desirability of army coöperation. It was believed to be just the thing wanted to facilitate the inquiry, and the writer proceeded to Washington to effect the combination.

General O’Reilly had already had the matter under consideration and was quite ready to draw up a project for presentation to the Secretary of War when Mr. Root should return to Washington from his summer vacation.

Twenty privates and three non-commissioned officers of the Hospital Corps of the United States Army under command of Dr. Lieutenant Wallace DeWitt are now quartered at New Haven in coöperation with the staff of the Sheffield Scientific School. It is the intention to learn, if possible, how little nitrogen is necessary to secure the best human efficiency; and also, if possible, to ascertain some measure of the evil effects of an excess of nitrogenous food as well as excess of food in general upon human efficiency.

The writer is grateful for the good fortune of being able to be of service in a development of interest in a subject which is of vital importance to the human race. He has enjoyed the benefits of an economic nutrition and knows its value.

The practical proof of a subject of personal application must come from such personal application. Each person must be his own doctor and his own scientist in the matter of his alimentation or he runs the risk of running amuck in his health economy. There is not so much to learn, neither is there very much to do to insure right alimentation, perfect digestion, and continuous good health; but the little required of us must be attended to with no lapses of attention.—Horace Fletcher.]