A CENTURY OF NUTRITION
By PROFESSOR J. C. DRUMMOND
IN 1837 the sturdy, seven-year-old child of British Science, already affectionately known as the British Ass, met at Liverpool. The Section of Chemistry, a science itself then scarcely fifty years old, moved by reports of the remarkable discoveries being made. by a young German chemist, by name Liebig, decided to send him a message asking him to prepare a " Report on the State of Organic Chemistry and Organic Analysis." In those days Organic Chemistry was no dry, academic study ; it covered investigation of " the chemical conditions essential to the life and perfect develop- ment of animals and vegetables."
Liebig was at that time applying his newly devised methods of analysis to the examination of all sorts of natural products, including, of course, the foods of man and animals. Those must have been thrilling days in the stuffy, dingy laboratories of Giessen. Young Lyon Playfair was a student there, and his letters give us a breath of the exciting atmosphere of enthusiasm and discovery. It must have been a proud moment for him when, Liebig being unable to be present, he read an abstract of his master's Report to the B.A. at Manchester two years • later. And what a report it was. New concepts, new theories, discovery after discovery in every field of chemistry relating to physiology and agri- culture. His book, published in 1840, caused a revolution of thought comparable with that which Lavoisier had begun half a century before. The medical men of Victoria's younger days held views on foods and their functions which had scarcely changed since the Middle Ages. Some foods were digestible, some engendered acidity and wind ; some were unsuitable for children, others were contra-indicated in gout. Such were the limits of their knoWledge. Of the character of the various constituents and of how they determined nutritive value almost nothing was known. Liebig firmly laid the foundations of the view that the essential components of foods are the albumins (proteins), the starchy foods (carbo- hydrates), the fats and the mineral salts. Out of this grew the opinion that the food requirements of man and animals could be assessed in terms of these units. The new know- ledge came at a time when it was greatly needed. The tide of industrialisation was in full spate. Town populations were growing apace. Many new and difficult problems arising from the shifting of the people appeared, amongst which none was more formidable than that of supplying them with fresh food.
Production and distribution had but lately become an industry, middlemen were rapidly multiplying, there was strong temptation to sophisticate and almost nothing was known about the prevention of deterioration. A meal, particularly for one of the poor, must have been something of an adventure, for, apart from food poisoning of bacterial origin which must have been very common, most of the cheaper foodstuffs were grossly and crudely adulterated. Bread was whitened with liberal helpings of alum, beer was given a " kick " by adding extracts of a seed, Cocculus indicus, which also contributed a potent poison, cheap sweetmeats were sometimes highly coloured with red, yellow, blue and green mineral pigments of a deadly nature. The con- temporary accounts of the manufacture of sausage-meat or of " mock " butter are no less hair-raising than Rugg's description of the underground cellars in which in conditions of unbelievable filth cows were kept for the greater part of the year, half-starved on hay and brewers' grains to provide London's milk. Even then, the product was usually watered and some of the cream skinned off.
Frederick Accum, who revealed all this in 1820, was regarded by some as a tiresome crank, by others as a dangerous meddler. Vested interests did not hesitate to lead a move- ment which ultimately drove him back to Germany. The anonymous " Enemy of Fraud and Villainy " who took up the attack in " Deadly Adulteration and slow Poisoning ; or Disease and Death in the Pot and Bottle " was dubbed by The Lancet " a well-meaning individual, but of that class of exaggerating alarmist." It was not until Liebig's work had leavened the science of Chemistry in England that the terrible truth of what had been written " in a tone of half-mad honesty " was realised. Appropriately, The Lancet made amends. In 1850, Wakley, the editor, established the famous Analytical and Sanitary Commission which during the next five years published the findings of its experts, Dr. Hassall and Dr. Letherby. They caused consternation. Birmingham led by appointing a " Public Analyser " in 1854 ; Parliament sluggishly aroused itself and passed a rather inept Adulteration Act in 1860 ; a new Society, that of the Public Analysts, came into being in 1874.
The pages of the medical journals of the time are grim read- ing. For most mothers the only alternative, if they were unable to feed their child, was a wet-nurse. The feeding= bottle came in with the crinoline. Knowing what the cow's milk was like, we are not surprised that few survived ; " in one orphanage all those who are received are nourished by hand through a suckling-bottle ; of 244 admitted, 197 died inside a year." The deterioration of health in Industrial England during Victoria's reign—read the awful pages of Engels—occurred largely because knowledge of the nature, composition and function of foodstuffs was being gained at a rate so much slower than that at which the development of methods for the treatment and preparation of foods was proceeding. It is impossible to estimate the vast sum of human suffering and loss caused by ignorance of such matters as what happened when the first primitive attempts at canning food were made, of what was missing when vegetable oils were first made into a colourable imitation of butter or of what essential substances were being rejected when the germ was removed in the manufacture of white " patent " flour.
In many respects another era opened when Edward the Seventh . came to the Throne in 1902. The time can be marked quite memorably in the history of the science of nutrition by one important movement which was beginning to make itself felt. Physiologists and a few medical research workers were becoming suspicious of the adequacy of The old, water-tight theory about proteins, fats, carbohydrates and mineral salts supplying all that the body needed. It didn't seem to explain why a Malay coolie developed beri-beri on a diet of white, polished rice but would remain in good health if he ate the husked, unpolished variety. Why did a small dose of cod-liver oil rapidly cure rickets in the young lion cubs at the Zoo when their diet already contained ample fat ? Why were there so many cases of scurvy amongst the children of the well-to-do when brought up on the bottle ? Was it related to the fact that parents and nurses in a burst of enthusiasm for the teachings of the new germ theory of disease were sterilising right and left ? By the end of Edward's reign there could be no longer doubts. The vitamins were born. Another Coronation, and within a few years the shattering events of 1914. It is a date which we can also mark in our nutritional survey. All over Europe men were called to the colours on a scale unknown since Napoleon's campaigns. But there were medical examinations and physical tests to be passed. Man after man was rejected as physically unfit, bad teeth, flabby heart, bent limbs, and other defects, some of which the experts were beginning to ascribe primarily to faulty diet. The accepted men often improve 3l out of all recognition with good food and exercise during training. So the ravages of chronic malnutrition were revealed in a manner that before long forced itself on the attention of the sociologist, the public health authority and the politician. But the emergencies of the Great War provided many other stimuli to research in the science of food. Progress became so rapid as to leave one almost bewildered. An isolated reference to a subject one year would be followed twelve me tills later by perhaps a hundred papers in the appropriate journals. Interest in practical nutrition came to be focussel more and more on feeding during the early years of life ; remember that it was only in 1907 that Parliament, after a heavy struggle, accepted the principle that the feeding of poor s thoolchildren might be " educational " and not necessarily in the nature of relief.
The present reign opens with those who are interested in nutrition in optimistic frame of mind. Knowledge of the composition of foods and of the changes which they are likely to undergo on treatment is so comprehensive and is being acquired so rapidly that there is comparatively little danger that novel forms of food will be offered to the public before their true nutritive worth can be assessed, as was the case when margarine was first introduced in the 'eighties. The tremendous importance and the magnitude of the national problems of nutrition are daily being more widely recognised. One of the most valuable essays of nutrition remains to be written, perhaps in fifty years' time. It will compare the effect on Health and physical fitness which the rapid indus- trialisation of the Soviet Union has had, the experts having now so great a wealth of knowledge to prevent the tragic consequences of the ignorance of the days when machines began to whirr in Queen Victoria's early years.
An article by Mr. Gerald Heard on" The Psychology of the Coronation," which was to have appeared in this issue, is held over till next week. .
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