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6. For a number of years studies have been in progress on the value
of anti-rabic serum and of various methods of treatment in which com-
bined treatment with serum and vaccine and with combination of living
and dead virus is employed. The progress in this work has been reported
from time to time and the work is still continuing.
NUTRITION RESEARCH.
A detailed study of medical literature during the last hundred years
in India would without doubt reveal many references to diet as a possible
factor in the causation of disease. Systematic nutrition research is,
however, a development of the last 25 years. The earliest important work
dealing specifically with the problems of nutrition in India was that
of D. McCay, whose book "The Protein Element in Nutrition" was pub-
lished in 1912 when McCay was professor of Physiology in the Medical
College, Calcutta. The theme of this work is that the remarkable varia-
tion in the physical development of different Indian peoples can be
explained in terms of diet; specifically, in terms of protein content. McCay
argued that the physique of the Bengali was inferior to that of the Punjabi
because the former lived largely on rice, a cereal with a low protein
content, while the latter, consuming wheat and milk, had a much higher
protein intake. McCay's work was written before the importance of
vitamins and minerals in nutrition was understood, and unquestionably he
laid undue emphasis on the protein factor. Nevertheless "The Protein
Element in Nutrition", the first work to draw attention to the relation
between diet and physique, may well be considered one of the classics
of nutritional science. A few years earlier Braddon in Malaya made a
masterly analysis of the epidemiology of beriberi, demonstrating the re-
-lation of the disease to the state of milling of rice. Braddon's work,
like McCay's, was based on an assumption which later research has
shown to be untenable and has been largely overlooked and forgotten.
Neither has received the recognition which his work deserved.
2. The active development of nutrition research in India in the post-war
period was due to R. McCarrison, to whom belongs the credit of having
outlined the problem and demonstrated its importance. McCarrison's
work in the field of nutrition began with "The Goitre and Cretinism In-
quiry" in Kasauli in 1913 and 1914. The effect of faulty food on the thyroid
gland was the main subject of the investigation. After the war, McCarrison
resumed his work in Coonoor, now extending the range of his investigations
to cover the pathological changes caused by defective diet in most of the
organs of the body. Nutrition research in Coonoor at this period was
officially designated the "Beriberi Inquiry". The "Beriberi Inquiry" con-
tinued until January 1920, when McCarrison was invalided home. He
resumed work in Oxford in 1921 and 1922, and in 1922 returned to Coonoor,
to undertake the "Deficiency Diseases Inquiry." This Inquiry continued
at the Pasteur Institute, Coonoor, until November, 1923, when it was
"axed" on the recommendation of the Inchcape Committee, and its equip-
ment and personnel dispersed. In 1925 the Coonoor Unit was re-estab-
lished, this time to be known as Nutrition Research, a title it still retains.
Contributed by Dr. W. R. Aykroyd, M.D.