Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/282

278 personal hygiene which will be considered in this paper. It will be discussed in its relation to the development of efficient social personality in the home.

We trace first the development of public sentiment in regard to the importance of food suitable to maintain the body in a state of efficiency and health.

Distinct progress in the study of the foods necessary for the body was made when chemists and physiologists began to work hand in hand in their investigations. Liebig (1803-1873) took a step in advance when he declared that protein foods are the source of energy and his statements held sway for many years until they were overthrown by experimental evidence. Fick, who in 1865, made an ascent of the Faulhorn on a diet entirely without protein did much to overthrow Liebig's theory.

Other original investigations followed, for the necessity of experimental evidence had by that time been fully established, until we come to the name of Karl von Voit, who in his studies in metabolism, sought to learn the kinds and quantities of food used by people of different occupations.

Professor Atwater, lately deceased, contributed much by original studies to the subject of diet and nutrition in our own country. But the most scholarly and thorough investigations in this country on the subject of diet in its relation to the actual necessities of the body have been carried on by Dr. Chittenden, professor of physiological chemistry at Yale University and director of the Sheffield Scientific -School. In these he has sought to establish by a series of accurate tests of sufficient number to warrant conclusions the minimum requirements of food for the body under certain conditions. He sought to determine the real physiological needs of the body for food in order that energy may be furnished and tissue be built up and replaced.

These data furnished by the chemists and the physiologists concerning the food necessities for individual welfare, the sociologist makes use of in his study of society, for a society can be no more potent than is the personality of the individuals who compose it. Hence, as Professor Giddings says, "The supreme result of efficient social organization and the supreme test of efficiency is the development of the social man."