STUDY OF HUMAN DIET.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4731, 30 July 1924, Page 1

STUDY OF HUMAN DIET.

WOMAN DOCTORS 1500 RATS. PROBLEMS OF MOTHERCRAFT. Dr. Gladys Hartwell, of London, is solving one of the problems of mothercraft by a strange method—the study of rats. They live among several hundred girl students, who have so completely overcome the aversion to rats they they would make pets of them if this were allowed. Dr. Hartwell believes that the reason why many well-to-do mothers cannot feed their babies is that they are themselves actually too well fed, in the sense of being too richly fed. This is only one of a series of conclusions which Dr. Hartwell has drawn from the commonly detested rat. She has proved it by giving mother rats such foods as meat, fiish, and butter in plenty, but no vegetables. The results of this surplus of proteins has been apparent at once. The young rats became nervous and irritable ; they failed to grow ; were overtaken by spasms and finally died. Before this had happened often the interests of science and the kindly nature of Dr. Hartwell intervened. A little fruit or vegetable juice given to the mother worked like a miracle, and the young rats became their naturally happy, placid, and thriving selves again. Dr. Hartwell uses rats, she told a “Daily News” interviewer, because they like all the foods a human likes, and because they breed rapidly, live contet tedly, and with very little trouble can be kept clean and healthy. Other scientists do not find the matter so simple. Requests for rats come to he • from unsuccessful keepens all over the world. Her own explanation of her success is that now she actually likes rats. In a lofty room at the Household and Social Science Department of Kings College, with large windows shaded by the garden trees, Dr. Hartwell has now 1500 rats, all the de scendants of a pair of Norwegian rats with 1 which she commenced her studies. A sickly rat is isolated at once, arid in consequence Miss Hartwell and her assistant handle the rats with astonishing freedom. They come at a call, sit perfectly quiet on the scales for their daily weighing or sit with their faces touching Dr. Hartwell's own while she talks to them in baby language. She recognises them all individually by their markings, for .they are all prettily piebald. They are fed on rations of butter, meat, and vegetables. measured out in little dishes, all standing in rows. So s-oothing is the academic air of Campden Hill and this considerate treatment that tiie mothers allow their little ones to De weighed from the day of their.birth and never think of eating them. They are weighed il a nest of cotton wool, and full records of them all are kept—eVen to 'the extent of notes about their temper and behaviour. The natural repulsion of the Ob' server quickly disappears when Dr. Hartwell, glowing with enthusiasm for her work, what lessons may be -learnt from her rats for the benefit of the coming generation. The terrible effects on child life of underfeeding or wrong feeding are evident when she sets side by side two rats, born on the same day, treated in exactly, the same way, except that one of them has been brought up by a mother fed no a slum diet, and as the result at the end of three weeks looks like a dwarf, being, indeed, only «about a third of the size of the young giant whose mother has had a good mixed diet. Another striking moral for medical men and nurses is to be drawn from a race of rats which has lived and bred but has never reared one of its young because its diet —purposely, of course—has contained too much protein (fish, meat, etc.) and too little vitamine B, which is contained in many-fruits and vegetables. The les-, son for humanity to be drawn from such an example may obviously be of the most vital* importance. We have gone to* the ant to learn industry: we must go to the rat, it seemis, to learn the science of dietetics. Dr. Hartwell’s work is mainly financed by the Medical Research Council. Her large family is not an inexpensive one.- Her results are watched with interest by specialists all over the world. Some of them have been previously communicated in the columns of the “Daily News” by Professor Mottram, professor of physiology, to whom she acts as assitant. Their value for human brings was •tested by the principal of the college, Dr. Henry, who discovered that a large ‘ Board of Guardians in Lancashire was producing illness among the children, under its care by giving them a diet which had been proved in i the case of rats to cause exactly the name symptoms. The main lessons for mothers which Dr. Hartwell deduces from her charges are that it matters comparatively little what the mother eats before the child is born, but that afterwards safety and health are to be found in a thoroughly well-mixed diet.