Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1908 [PAGE 414]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

886

UNIVEESITY OF ILLINOIS.

LABORATORY OF PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY.

[Oct. 19

October 17, 1907. President Edmund J. James, University of Illinois: MY DEAR PRESIDENT JAMES—I hereby wish to make the following report regarding the present status of the investigations connected with the Nutrition Club. The two houses which were rented for the purposes of these experiments have been neatly and cheaply furnished in a sanitary manner. The houses have been fairly well fitted up for the purposes of the club. In connection with the club we have a matron and a good chef. The routine work of keeping the houses clean and in running condition and the work connected with the kitchen and the serving of meals is done almost exclusively by students of the University; who are deserving and in part working their way through the University. The club of twenty-four University students has been completely formed, and the experiment has been launched in a manner which promises much for the future. At present the twenty-four men are all rooming in the houses. They are also being fed upon the diet which was determined upon and selected by the Commission. The men selected for the. work vary in age from 19 to 31 years. They average in weight 141 pounds. The students are distributed between the classes as follows: Four seniors, five juniors, eleven sophomores and four freshmen. They were given a fairly rigid medical examination by the methods approved by the Commission and outlined in detail in another communication which I am submitting herewith. I am convinced that by the aid of Doctors MacNeal, Chapin,. and Rutherford, a very desirable group of young men has been selected, considered from the standpoint of studentship, intelligence and physical condition. All of the men apparently are earnest in their endeavors to carry out the work which we have in hand, and most of them, if not all of them, are interested in the industry. We have had no trouble in getting our full quota of men. We hav<? had eighty-five volunteer applications for the club. We have given the. medical examination to forty-three men and from these we have selected the twenty-four men which now form the club. The men who were given the medical examination and not accepted were in one way or another subject to chronic irregularities which would probably interfere with their being subjects continuously for a period of ten months as desired for the purpose of our experiments. The men are given their rooms and board for acting as subjects. They receive no further compensation except the training and discipline which they necessarily get as a result of being connected with the undertaking. All of the foods supplied each individual of the club will be accurately weighed and carefully and very completely analyzed. All of the" excreta of each member of the organization will be collected and weighed and exhaustively examined chemically, microscopically, and bacteriologically. The details of the various lines of work connected with the investigation which has been thoroughly planned are proving on application to work well. The scientific data which result from such a large undertaking are accumulating at present rapidly, and it is quite apparent that our investigations will yield results of unusual importance and of far reaching significance in this field of scientific investigation. The laboratories which are used in connection with this work, namely, the chemical, bacteriological, physiological, and medical, have been somewhat improved and added to at the expense of the University for this special work. They now are quite well fitted for our purposes. The investigation is an unusually large undertaking. It differs from all similar investigations mainly in five points. In the first place, a much larger group of men is taken for the study than has ever been taken before in such work. In the second place, the experiment is to continue for a much greater length of time than any previous experiment of this nature. In the third place, a more thorough and extensive study is to be made upon the foods used, upon the excretary products and upon the subjects of the experiment than has yet been made. In the fourth place, the men are served their food under conditions entirely similar to those used in everyday life. Such has