sively consumed as articles of food by the simple. process of first medicating them with benzoate of soda, permission to do which is based upon the findings of this referee board. It is to be remembered that the utilization of this material which without the use of benzoate of soda, must go to waste, represents a large margin of profits to certain selfishly commercialized interests, and that this fact accounts in large part for the pressure brought upon the Government to reverse its original position.

QUESTIONS DODGED BY REFEREES.

It must follow from what I have said

that the government naturally desires the fulest possible information on the subject. This embraces not only the effect of the drug itself in large and small doses on the human system and on the nutritive value of food subjected to its influence, which the board assumed to investigate, but other phases of the problem of the most vital character to which the board did not give the slightest attention. Thus one phase was the limit to which the benzoate could be added to foods without, as the board avers, in the slightest degree damaging their nutritive value This is a point of extreme importance in

view of the fact that, on the findings of these referees, the government has proclaimed a license to medicate the food of the people with this drug in any quantity with absolutely no restriction upon the articles of food that may be subjected to its use. Are we to understand that even these referees, partisans of benzoate of soda that I shall show them to be. have the temerity to say that this powerful drug can be added to food in all proportions without imparing its nutritive value or that it can be eaten by the people, in all quantities, at all times and under all conditions without serious consequences to their health?

Then, too, it was manifestly incumbent upon this board to have determined the amount of benzoate required to preserve (a) sound food. (b) unsound food and (c) sewage. But it has seen fit also to ignore this practical phase of the problem in spite of the fact that these commercial usages must have been known to them, as shown by their discussion of other commercial usages, and in spite of the fact that the specific interrogatories submitted to them by the government logically embrace these and all other points necessary for its intelligent guidance in the solution of this great problem.

A FUNDAMENTAL POLICY.

In framing its experiments upon which to base its reply to the interrogatories posed by the government, the referee board arranged that they should be conducted by each of three members -one set of experiments on six men in New Haven, one set on four men in New York and one set on six men in Chicago. The subjects were men, healthy and robust, some students, some physicians, and all I believe, engaged in active pursuits, some of the athletes, the majority of them between 20 and 30 years old. None, I believe, was over All, therefore, possessed the maxi

43.

In these

mum power of resistance. facts we find the first as it is one of the most serious fallacies underlying the investigations; for the average index of resistance of sixteen robust young men can not be accepted as the average index of resistance of the young and old, the well and the ill, the strong and the weak who make up the promiscuous millions that are consumers of medicated foods. The well known difference between men and women in their respective susceptibility to drugs, recognized and acted upon by every intelligent physician in the land, is a fact that further accenuates the fundamental fallacy to which I have alluded and one that would hardly have escaped the referee board if it had been made up of pharmacologists who are in the habit of investigating such questions. It is obvious from these considerations that the questions at issue is one that must appeal for answer to the accumulated experience of the medical profession rather than to any board, however expert, that relies exclusively upon defective laboratory methods for its results.

A WONDERFUL DIET-SOME MORE FALLACY.

The subjects thus accepted were not only of the highest general average of resistance, but it would seem that their diet was arranged with reference to keeping that resistance at the maximum by giving them the benefits of forced nutrition. In New Haven they had a dietry practically unlimited in variety and amount-at some meals some of the subjects taking as many as twenty-five different articles. In Chicago, "the men were allowed a very ample diet following their own tastes and desires as far as possible"-which interpreted in the light of further information given it would seemed to have meant a sort of riot of the gourmands. In New York, it is only necessary to say that among the daily menus published was one that em

braced oranges, cantaloupes, scrambled eggs, ham, bread, butter, sugar, milk, force, tomatoes, soup, stringbeans, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, veal cutlets, gravy, metropolitan cake and coffee, aggregating 2405.3 grams of food. This was fairly typical of other menus which, however,in some instances, embraced the added attractions of sour pickles and bologna! What science can unravel the chemistry of such a mess which weighed in without analysis at each meal, seemed to be limited only by the physical capacity of the stomach rather than the digestive and assimilative capacity of the subjects? It had, however, the natural effect of maintaining both nutrition and. the powers of resistance at the maximum during the comparitively short period of the experiments. At the same time by mixing, if not losing, the three-tenths of a gram of benzoate in nearly two thousand five hundred grams of food the assimilation of the benzoate itself, and, consequently, its effects were reduced to a minimum. Some of the diet as for instance the excess of milk, seemed arranged with reference to its antidotal effects on the benzoate which, in certain instances, was doubtless thereby practically eliminated from the experi

ment.

AN EXAMPLE OF DISCREET EXPERIMEN

count.

TATION.

This fact and some others equally important, become apparent when the manner of administering the benzoate of soda to these subjects is taken into ac"The salt was given three times a day-0.1 gram of benzoate with each. meal-and in some one article of food where it would be present to the extent of about one-tenth of one per cent by weight of food." This was continued

for several weeks after which, in the New Haven group at least, there was a period of something more than a week

of abstinence from benzoate for the purpose of recuperation. Then the medicament was resumed by giving 0.6 gram. 1.0 gram, 20 grams, and 4.0 grams in nonsecutive order each for a period of one week. This was followed by another week from benzoate after which the subject was weighed out of the ring. While there were some variations in details, practically the same methods were observed in all of the groups.

A FEW MORE POINTED QUESTIONS. Several more important queries are suggested by these facts. In the first place, in view of the fact that an attempt was made to imitate the manner in which the salt would be taken if used in food as a preservative," why was not two-tenths per cent instead of one-tenth per cent used as a basis of computation? And why was not the minimum dosage arranged accordingly? The query is pertinent in view of the fact that the larger percentage is the one frequently if not more generally employed in commercial preservation of food. And it becomes especially pertinent and the dosage employed by order of the referees becomes ridiculously small, if the license for the unlimited medication of food by benzoate of soda, already granted by the government, acting under the advice ot this referee board, shall result in preparation of food in that manner up to the limit of possibility.

Then, too, it is an ascertained fact, familiar to physicians in general, that certain of the effects of benzoate of soda on the human system are cumulative in character. The accurate determination of this fact by the experiments under review was made impossible, the cumulative effects of the drug having reduced to a minimum by the interval in administration for a week and by the omission of the drug from the food for another whole week before a final accounting was made of the subjects con

dition. When our dietry shall have become entirely benzoated must the people from time to time go a whole week without food to maintain their normal index of resistance? And must they go still another week without food if they shall desire to determine their actual state of health? Fortunately for this phase of the question certain facts elicited by the actual experimenters and to which I shall subsequently alude, seem to have escaped the censorship of the referees and are now to be found if searched for, in the body of the report.

SOME STRANGE RULES AND EVIDENCE.

The effects on the human system of this mildly medicated diet, dictated by the referees, and not the experimenters, was the assumed object of the experiments. In view of this fact these studies on waste and repair of the body were characterized by the crude and uncertain methods of control. To have met the scientific requirements of modern pharmacology the analytical methods should have taken accurate account of both intake and outgo, and where the two failed to balance the difference must have been found with demonstrable precision. My notes, embracing many pages based upon Report 88, show many numerous and flagrant instances of disregard of accurate determinations of either the intake or the outgo. Even in the instance of nitrogen, in which the effort was made to seem accurate, the variableness of the balance of nitrogen and the failure to account for such balances when demonstrated together with the tendency in other instances to brush them aside as of no importance, to show the defectiveness of the methods employed. This method of dealing with what is really the crux of the whole question is shown by the fact that when one of the subjects, a physician, insisted during the experiment that the benzoate was injuring him, he was assured by the particular referee

who had charge of him and who was paid to protect the health of the people, that he-the subject, physician that he was, didn't know anything about his own symptoms. In another instance, calculated to throw light not only on method but motive underlying these forced interpre tations, a subject who complained of "disturbed digestion, malaise and inaptitude for work," was waived aside with the assurance assurance that the investigators "were unable to satisfy themselves that these symptoms were dependent on the benzoate ingested, but believed them to be due to other causes," which causes the investigators failed to indicate by so much as a hint. The statement is made that "there is no evidence derivable from data given in this table that there was any disturbance of nitrogen metabolism," while the record of one subject, at least, showed the remarkable variation of from 2.14 negative while the benzoate was being taken to 1.42 positive after its cessation. As a matter of fact, the whole report indicates a phenomenal disturbance of nitrogen. metabolism for healthy people-a disturbance that unequivocally demonstrates the harmful effects of the benzoate.

SOME RELUCTANT ADMISSIONS.

But there were certain changes in the urine indicative of modified tissue changes induced by the benzoate in the system, that were so flagrant that they could not be ignored. Thus it was shown that the benzoate taken in came out hippuric acid-a long established fact; that the hippuric acid thrown off was relative to the benzoate taken in a fact long accepted; that the difference between intake and output represented the residual benzoate held in the system-an obviously logical proposition; and finally, the persistance of the hippuric acid in the urine above the normal for days if not for weeks after the benzoate had been discontinued proved that a part of it re