DIETETICS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 102, 4 May 1925, Page 7

DIETETICS

VITAL PROBLEMS OF DIET

REPAIRING THE LIVING MACHINE

A HERALD OF BETTER TIMES,

A quarter of a century or so ago there were those who said that radium was a nine day's wonder, and a decado or less ago there have been those who tell us that vitamins were just a passing fashion. When their discoverer, as president of a section, gave bis address at the International Medical Congress in London, in 1913, the attendance, according to my recollection, consisted of not more than a dozen persons, though the Congress numbered several thousand doctors. Various exciting new operations and so forth—doubtless now best forgot-

ten—were being discussed elsewhere, and but a handful of us wished to hear about the results of such experiments as the feeding of mice with pure proteins. However, writes "Lens" in the "New Statesman,'' time sifts things, and this year we may congratulate Sir Gowland Hopkins on his long-earned knighthood, and may proceed to look further at the newdietetics which owe so much to him. Of course, we are not as foolish as to think that vitamins are now the wholeof the subject, though it is natural that mental vessels of small capacity should at all times be ready to throw away what they already carry in order to accommodate something new without being swajnped. We are not to ignore the calorie dietetics, which wo owe to the Germans in the nineteenth century, and which concern our internal-combustion engines, just as his petrol concerns the motorist or aviator ; but we must proceed to the incomparably more subtle and vital problems of diet concerned with the growth, the resistance, the self-re-pair, the adaptation, the reproduction in which the living machine is unique and inimitable.

Like all real knowledge, these new discoveries articulate with, extend, confirm, illuminate, knowledge which we already possessed. (This really is a universe of which we aye discussing however small a part.) Almost at tile very beginning of his researches Sir Gowland Hopkins threw out the suggestion that the accessory food factors, as he modestly called them, might act upon and through the system of ductless glands. The recent observations on iodine, the practical utility of which has been here indicated on various occasions, furnish a perfect illustration of the manner in which the absence or presence of a minute constituent of the diet may affect the function of a ductless gland, and thus produce the largest consequences upon body and mind, 'upon the individual and the race. BIAS TOWARDS THE ARTIFICIAL. Let us admit that the medical profession and its patients—even after all these years—have a bias towards the artificial, towards drugs and potions and novel machines, and surgical operations, and anything astonishing and unheard of; whilst the laws of life and the fascinating natural magic of its simplest needs are regarded as banal. Diet is not sufficiently taught in the medical curriculum. A little real knowledge about it might well replace a monstrous mass of misinformation about worthless drills inherited from the darkest ages. The text books in this country are for the most part out of data, 'and only in special publications can access be had to our modern knowledge. The volume winch is admittedly the English text book on food contains in its recent new edition six perfunctory lines about iodine, and a ludicrously inadequate interpolation about vitamins. In many instances there is evidence to show "that busy medical practitioners are obtaining hints of the latest dietetic knowledge from articles, or even scrappy quotations from letcures, in the daily Press.

Yet it is just at this date that the science of food has reached a standard which offers us unlimited possibilities. As I have often said here before, the master word oi our century is not heredity, nor infection, but nutrition, and dietetics is.part of nutrition—though not the whole, as our studies of radiation alone may suffice to remind us. The discovery of the relation of iodine to the thyroid gland must lead us, lor instance, to study other mineral and organic ingredients of the diet, including by no means tho vitamines alone, in the hope that we may be able to control, and regulate processes of growth and adaptation, resistance to disease, psychical balance, as never before. But if we are to make headway quickly with this creative medicine, of to-morrow, dietetics must be made the subject of serious concern in a scientific'spirit, by intelligent people in general—rather than the hunting ground of the cranks, the killjoys, dyspeptics and eccentrics generally, not to mention a vast variety of commercial interests, some of which coincide with the public interest, whilst others are "very otherwise. "'

If these considerations are sound, we mus* especially welcome for itself, and as a herald of better times, the recent publication of a famous medical journal, "The Practitioner," wherein the present position of our knowledge is clearly stated by a group of our most authoritative writers. ' For some years past Sir Arbutlmot Lane has been concerning himself with the relation of our present-day food habits to various diseases of the food canal, and particularly to cancer. This famous surgeon has now undertaken the editorship of "The Practitioner," and we may take his first number to indicate what has happened in his mind. After long years of operations and yet more operations, ma-iv successful, many inevitably futile no humane man can reach the status' of a senior—unless, indeed, he be literally a surgeon, or "manual labourer" and" no more—without becoming utterly sick and disgusted to realise how mud, of his work depend? upon, the preve.nl.ible ignorance and folly- uf mankind, all desirous of life, and. in their sciireli for it. rurhing headlong, blindfold to the grave. Jims the great surgeon, weary of blood, however' well inU-nlio'ned its spilling., gives us » publication, which, if acled upon, would wipe out very nearly all surgery other Mian (hut winch depends on accident and war. A FOEMIDABLE TASK. 'The task is formidable, lor knowkd"e is not enough: (Imv „m sl | J( , „,, . |( [ c . quate motive before we cau hope that the findings ol tin: laboratory or the les suns derived from comparative study of dillorent races ami tlieii- hnbiU -nay be accepted by the public. Palat- and fashion and prejudice are. in la,-,,,. „,c . l s. ui-c. against the new knowledVrr \ large proportion of mankind has 'habits' apart from food, which. lx»-ond all i-o*' sible dispute, shorten life, often in most miserable ways; yet they laugh at v.-mi ■ ings with the optimism of the man who fell from a skyscraper and half-wav down shouted that he was all right so far How, then, are we to change the habits of adults, uniess perhaps by fright eiiin" them sufficiently:' "No Religion is any good without a ilell," as the new cdi-

tor of the "Practitioner" has been heard to say; and even a Hell is perfectly futile, unless it is believed in. Probably, as 111 so many other instances, it is not really worth whilu to try to work upon the adult, but we may make a begitiimig with children. The feeding hi schools, orphanages, and all such places at present is," for the most part, a disgrace to everybody concerned. The most simple and practicable and fundamental findings of modern dietetics are utterly limited. Sir (Jowlaiid Hopkins and the superb work of his followers during the last fifteen years might never have existed. Depleted vegetables, worthless broad, tooth-destroying artificial sugars, vilamine and iodine-less rubbish, tasteless and not worth tasting, every combination of excess and defect and poison—the.se. arc common fare, and in duo course most caters find their pitiful way imioiig the throng who, as Mr. Bernard Shaw once remarked, arc "the natural prey of the operating surgeon." Let us give public thanks for the prospect ot a day when we shall learn and teach the primary laws of nutrition in such wise as to save at- least our bodies, if not our souls, alive. Only the queer and absurd desire that we shall go back to Nature in the sense of goino- back to dust and mud ;- but science, or natural knowledge, grows and serves us, if we will, to realise the profound dictum of Bacon, that "Nature can be commanded only by obeyino- her."