Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1912 [PAGE 97]

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1910]

PROCEEDINGS OF T H E BOARD O F TRUSTEES. N U T R I T I O N INVESTIGATION.

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President James introduced also Professor Grindley, who presented the following communication in regard to the investigation in nutrition that has been made by the University:

URBANA, Dec. 13, 1910.

To the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois: To save you time and to. put before you effectively what I deem desirable in this connection, with your permission I will read what I have to say. The University of Illinois has completed the experimental work of the most extensive, the most thorough, and the most valuable nutrition investigation ever made in the wrorld up to the present time.- I make this statement not upon my own authority, but by the authority of some of the most noted scholars in the fields of nutrition, public health, hygiene, and medicine in this country; namely, Chittenden, Theobald Smith, Mathews, Edsall, Benedict, Langworthy, Sedgwick, and others, who have examined the results of this investigation that the University has made. Already there has been published, through the scientific journals, an amount of data and information relating to this investigation that would make a volume of 475 pages. There, are now ready for publication three volumes of 500 pages each, and within the next nine months there will be ready two additional volumes of 500 pages each. Further, after these five volumes are published in full, if opportunity is afforded, three to five volumes more of exceedingly valuable material may be prepared from the data which the investigation has given. The first six volumes which have been planned, when published, will record in scientific form for future study and reference by far the greatest amount of scientific data and knowledge relative to the nutrition of man that has ever been published in this field of science as the result of one continuous experiment upon man. The publication when completed will be a reference work and a comprehensive and abundant source of exact, scientific information of untold value to students and scholars in. nutrition, public health, and medicine, and also to scholars in the study of the conservation of our national wealth and health. The data, the discussions, the conclusions of this investigation of the University relating to the nutrition of man are and will be frequently and extensively quoted all around the world by students and scholars in this field of human endeavor. The one most important discovery of this investigation, which stands out pre-eminently from the scientific view point, is the fact that the human body apparently possesses a mechanism and maintains a series of vital processes for the metabolism of nitrates. In other word's, the human organism apparenty has the power and • exercises the power of producing and destroying nitrates in accord with some as yet unknown requirements for certain minute and limited quantities of these inorganic food constituents. It is difficult to imagine the means by which this formation and this destruction are brought about. It is possible that they may be induced by the .action of enzymes, by the glands of the body, or by intestinal bacteria. While scholars in nutrition are well acquainted with protein metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, and fat metabolism in the human body, until the present discovery, such a thing as "nitrate metabolism" had not been thought of. This discovery is pronounced by the commission the most remarkable and ,the most important physiological result of the entire investigation. As soon as the results of the preliminary work upon this special subject which has been done by the University are published, a considerable number of investigators in different parts of the world will strenuously apply themselves to the elaboration and final solution of this question of "nitrate metabolism."