Nutritional science in medicine / Sir Edward Mellanby.

  • Edward Mellanby
Date:
1944
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nutritional science in medicine / Sir Edward Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    abnormal working of bodily processes which, when physio- .ogical or optimal, result in good health. It will be remem¬ bered that Claude Bernard claimed, on this basis, that medical dence was essentially experimental physiology. This again as an overstatement of the case, but the success of the teries morbi hypothesis, as achieved byN Pasteur, Lister d Koch, again delayed, but did not prevent, the ultimate tcceptance of Bernard’s hypothesis. Indeed the develop- nt of research on “ deficiency diseases ” has tended only \\ 3 emphasize the truth of the Bernard teaching. Dangers of a Specialized Outlook There is surely a lesson to be learnt from these historical $ Ificts—namely, that we must avoid allowing the very success f < f research on the relation of nutrition and disease to cloak £ id possibly even to suppress, temporarily at least, other lithological hypotheses and theories. The specialist is the ckbone of medical, as of all research, but the concentration t leads to discovery is apt to be associated with blindness other views, and this must be guarded against. Probably danger is not so great nowadays, when many more men d women are engaged in medical research and when blication of results is so easy and widespread, but it would well if the danger were more widely recognized. What is re likely to happen now is, not the suppression of new 1 nts of view and new lines of scientific investigation, but too rapid development, and adoption as a fetish by an 'ertisement-goaded public, of new discoveries in medicine, s undesirable reaction as regards vitamins has not been ,|(f ent from some countries, and scientific men ought to ' ibat it. Except in infancy and childhood, there are but instances where good health cannot be maintained by properly chosen food without the constant adminis- of vitamin preparations. ’> Biological Problems ^irveying now the general field of nutritional science, J1 do we find ? We see that physiologists and bio- s usts, mainly by means of experiments on the growth of
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