DIET AND DISEASE

Evening Post, Issue 86, 11 April 1936, Page 12

DIET AND DISEASE

Considerable importance may well be attached to the experiment in diet carried out, according to a cable message today, at King's College Hospital, London, by a bio-chemical research officer and three students, who starved themselves of salt in order to test the effects on the human body. Living on salt-free bread, synthetic milk, unsalted butter, and thrice-boiled vegetables, all became sick but never hungry. They developed cramp, heart palpitation, and mental languor, and were; content to sit on a chair and do nothing for hours on end. It took them seven days to recover. It is stated that the research officer, Dr. Cane, hopes that the experiments will unravel the causes of a number of' obscure diseases. It is well known already that the absence of certain constituents in food and drink upsets the human system and gives rise to serious maladies. One of the oldest instances is that of scurvy at sea from which the early navigators suffered severely. The trouble in this case was an excess of salt in the meats on which sailors had to live and Captain Cook was among the first to divine the necessity for counteracting the effect of a monotonous • salt meat and farinaceous diet by the addition of fruit and fresh vegetables. This was long before the days of the discovery of the vitamins which those foods contain. Rickets is another disease due to lack of vitamins as well as sunlight, and other, diseases are beri-beri and pellagra where rice and maizi have been treated in such a way as to rob them of certain vital elements in the original grain. Mankind has long realised that salt is just such a vital element in diet. Salt is deemed so valuable in some parts of the world that it is used as money and the Bible has other references than that to the salt which "lost its savour." The human body is a chemical laboratory of the most delicate processes for the continuance of life arid it does not need an actual shortage of food to cause malnutrition, as exemplified by this case of salt-starvation. Under the conditions of modern civilisation, where urban populations are relegated far from the sources of natural food supply, an accurate study of diet has become a necessity, if mankind is to thrive