The "bio-chemists" entered the field of dietetics at a rather late stage and have succeeded, by laboratory experiments, in confirming practically the whole of the trophologic philosophy and practice of the Hygienic school. They, like Dr. Jackson, omit to mention this fact, however, in their public writings.

There is not a medical college in the United States that has a course in dietetics and the number of physicians who make an effort to acquire a knowledge of dietetics after graduation is exceedingly small. They usually plead lack of time and opportunity, but they find time and opportunity to play golf, take post-graduate courses in other and much less important subjects and even to go abroad. Dr. Phillip Norman ascribes their persistence in ignorance of how to feed the body to a lack of interest in the subject.

Dieting has never been an essential part of a physician's prescription and physicians have never known and do not know anything about diet, as they so freely admit. Eighteen years ago doctors were still ridiculing those who advocated dietary measures. Thirteen years ago it was still not a factor in the treatment of the sick and occupied no place in the discussions in medical journals. Much fun was poked at "diets," "dieting," and "diet systems" by the regular medical profession until it suddenly dawned on them one fine day that the people were asking for diet. Today it is a factor in the care of patients in the practice of only a few physicians, has just reached the point of discussion by the profession and is still subject to ridicule by many of the dignitaries in the profession.

Despite their confessed ignorance of diet, despite their lack of training in dietary science and their lack of experience in dietary practice, they are ever ready to assume an air of pontificial infallibility in their criticisms of those of us who do employ a knowledge of food science in our care and feeding of the well and the sick. Some of our medical critics, some of the leaders in the ranks of materia medica, accuse "diet fads" of causing "nutritional diseases," "metabolic disorders" and cancer. Diet "fads" cause fewer evils than poisonous drugs, putrid serums, rot vaccines, dirty soups, and unnecessary surgical operations. Although freely admitting that they know nothing of diet and of trophology, they declare "it's all wrong anyway."

Another objection frequently met with is that "only a fool will bother about his diet when he is the right weight, sleeps well, enjoys life and is happy." This objection assumes either that correct eating is only for the invalid, or, else, that one should not make an effort to preserve his health, but should eat haphazardly until he becomes ill and then should try to restore his health. The intelligent person will seek to prevent rather than remedy ill health.

It too often happens that when a medical man does become interested in dietetics he absorbs as much of the work of the Hygienic school as he can and passes it out to the public as his own. For example, some of them tell us that they "have found" that raw starch is digestible and that it is not well to eat proteins and starches at the same meal, but they forget that those they decry as "faddists" preceded them with these discoveries.

I do not want to be understood as saying that there are no medical men who possess a knowledge of diet. The leaven is at work in the profession and its more progressive and honest members have seen the light and have shown the rare courage that is required to break with professional precedent and follow that light. I am happy to have a number of such men, in various parts of the country, among my friends. To these men, I look with confidence, to lead their profession out of its self-imposed darkness. But for the great mass of physicians there is no newer knowledge of nutrition. They make no advance in dietary science. Indeed, some of their leaders labor to prove that the discoveries in the field of diet only reveal that they were feeding correctly all the time. It is lamentable, but true.

A tubercular specialist wrote a booklet a few years ago on feeding in tuberculosis. He briefly reviews the high-lights of dietary research and says that these findings only prove that they have been feeding tubercular cases correctly all the time. Physicians really seem to be unable to grasp the truths that have been uncovered about diet and seem incapable of comprehending their significance. They have never fed their tubercular patients correctly and are not doing so now.

Logan Clendening asserts that "Researchers on diet have not created a new dietary: they have simply proved why the old one so long in use was effective. * * * * It is really safer to stick to the long-established diets we have been all using and liking than to the pronouncements of the food dogmatists."

He here expresses the old "conservative" resistance to change and progress, the inertia of the "long-established." In the same article he asserts that the present eating habits of "the average human being" were formed "since he became a prosperous animal" and this is tantamount to the admission that our eating habits are not "long-established" ones. If he will look a little deeper he may discover that the food manufacturers are responsible for many of our recent eating habits and that processed foods are of recent modern origin.

I agree with Clendening that dietary research has not caused the medical profession to change its feeding plans and programs. They are still feeding their families and their patients as they were forty years ago. They are still defending white flour and coffee. They are still counting calories and lauding meat and a high protein diet.

Go into the hospitals and there you will find white flour, white sugar, denatured cereals, coffee, tea and the like served to patients. You discover that these same foods are eaten by the nurses. The hospital diet is notoriously unsatisfactory, as is testified to by physicians, internes, nurses and patients. It is miserably prepared and served with no consideration for its dietary value and with no regard for combinations. Meat, potatoes, white bread, corn starch pudding and tea are likely to form the bulk of the hospital diet. The discoveries of dieticians and scientists in the realm of food science are utterly disregarded in these medical institutions.

Dr. Victor Lindlahr admirably expresses the Hygienic view of this matter when he says: "Certainly marble halls, X-ray apparatus microscopes, rounded corners, patented beds and all the frills and doo-dads that the hospital heads so delight in, do not contribute to the building of a patient's body cells. The human tissues that heal a wound do not sprout from equipment, architecture, or spaciousness. Wouldn't it be better to have less pretentious hospitals, less equipment, less staff but more vitamins, mineral salts and better cooks and care of the preparation of food."

Visit the homes of their patients and see these eat; or, better still, consult the written or printed diet prescriptions the physician gives to his patients, where he gives any thought to diet at all, and note the whole long list of denatured foods prescribed. They are still advising "standardized" and antiquated diets and pleading as an excuse that they "are too busy to keep up with the news of progress or are too far away from the places in which that information is readily obtainable."

This is the poorest kind of an excuse for ignorance of a subject so vital, all the more so when we consider that these same physicians manage to keep up with the "advances" in drugs, serums, operations, etc., Dietary knowledge is too easily obtained for us to accept this as an excuse for their failure to acquire and make use of it. Medical colleges certainly cannot offer this as an excuse for not establishing a Chair in dietetics.

Go into the homes of physicians and you soon discover that they and the members of their families are eating denatured foods of all kinds. There is white bread on the table. There is also white sugar, commercial syrups and sulphured and canned fruits. Denatured cereals are there, as are also coffee and tea. Their food is prepared according to conventional methods and is eaten in the customary, haphazard manner, with no regard for combinations or other essential orthotrophic factors.

Dr. N. Phillip Norman, Instructor in Gastro-enterology, New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital, says, in an article in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, July, 1925: "The average medical man seems to have so little interest in dietary matters that I feel I should like to say or write something, at every possible opportunity, to stimulate his interest to a more definite understanding of the nutritional principles that should be applied to every person, regardless of whether he is sick or well."

Progress in dietary science (trophology) makes it essential that intelligent men and women reform their eating habits, even if physicians will not. I always suspect commercial motives in the physician, however high his standing, who disparages dietary reform and who sings that "the old time religion (diet) is good enough for me."

Orthotrophy, from the Greek Orthos--straight, erect, true--and Trepho--nourish, was coined by the author to designate correct nutrition and separate it from the great mass of fallacies that make up what now passes under the term dietetics. Orthotrophy--correct nutrition — is broad in its meaning and covers more than is implied under the term, food. We, therefore, employ the term trophology the science of food, in the narrow sense of food and food chemistry. Trophology will be used to supplant the term dietetics.

Orthotrophy means correct nutrition. There are times when to abstain from food is not only right but imperative; when to eat is not to nourish the body, but to poison it. Therefore fasting, or negative nutrition, comes, properly, under the heading of orthotrophy. Although frequent references to fasting will be made in this volume, the subject will be fully covered in Vol. III of this series.

Sunshine is also a nutritive "substance" of great importance. It will likewise be covered in Vol. III.