Department of History, University of Aberdeen, Old Brewery, Aberdeen AB24 3UB. E-mail: dfsmith{at}abdn.ac.uk
In April 1936, at a meeting of a Sub-Committee of the Advisory Committee on Nutrition of the Minister of Health for England and Wales and Secretary of State for Scotland, there was a discussion of John Boyd Orr's recently published Food, Health and Income.1 The book included a graph of height against age for different groups, showing that at age 14 some public school boys, later revealed to be from Eton College,2 were, on average, over five inches taller than some council school boys. Orr, director of the Rowett Research Institute near Aberdeen, commented that this was to be expected when the diets of the two groups were compared. But the minutes of the meeting record a discussion between JN Buchan, a medical officer of health, EP Cathcart, professor of physiology at Glasgow University, HE Magee of the Ministry of Health and E Mellanby of the Medical Research Council (MRC), which show there was little consensus among the experts of the day on the desirability of height:
Buchan:Is there any greater value in height or weight? I cannot see any great advantage in it.
Cathcart:Industrially, height is a drawback.
Magee:Would you suggest that, as you know that food has to do with physique of the individual, we should feed people in accordance with the employment you think they ought to take part in?
Buchan:That was not my suggestion. My suggestion was that health was apart altogether from the question of height or weight. That was really my suggestion: if we want to feed people for good health or perfect health, the question of making them two or three inches taller does not to my mind necessarily arise.
Magee:You cannot make them two or three inches taller, you can satisfy, or you cannot satisfy, a growth impulse. That is what it amounts to.
Mellanby:You can on average. It is a good thing to be taller and stronger.
Cathcart:Industrially it is not.
Mellanby:Quite apart from that, I would much rather see a fine Colonial person walking along the streets than the average person walking along our streets.
Cathcart:Industrially, it is not an advantage. I see recruiting people, and they have a height of 5ft 8ins and that is all they want. They are more comfortable amongst machines.3
This exchange illustrates the context in which Orr and his colleagues planned the Carnegie dietary and clinical survey that began about a year later. Controversy about the conclusions to be drawn from the data in Food, Health and Income was a major reason for embarking on the new project. Orr argued in Food, Health and Income that the diet of about 50% of the population was deficient in one or more nutrients, and he hoped this finding would usher in a new era of government intervention in the food system. He wanted a comprehensive national food policy to support agriculture and bring a good diet, and optimal growth and health, within the means of the whole population. But apart from some expansion of the existing milk-in-schools scheme, there was little action. Orr regarded the lack of agreement among the government's advisers on nutrition as a major reason for this. The large-scale Carnegie project, he hoped, would provide the data that would create consensus and oblige the government to act decisively.4
Much of the responsibility for designing the Carnegie survey fell to Isabella Leitch. Leitch had first been employed at the Rowett in 1923 as librarian and then as assistant to the physiology department and Orr's personal assistant. In 1929 she joined the newly establishing Imperial Bureau of Animal Nutrition which Orr directed and which was based at the Institute. The Bureau published Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews from October 1931, which was sponsored by the Reid Library of the Rowett Institute, the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, and the MRC, and covered both animal and human nutrition. In this capacity she acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of nutrition and assisted the Institute's staff with many projects, and Orr with background papers for his committee work.5
Between 19371939, when the survey was underway, and October 1950 when Leitch delivered her paper to the Scottish section of the Nutrition Society,6 the context of nutrition science had changed. Before the survey was completed and written up, the war had intervened. The Advisory Committee on Nutrition was allowed to lapse, but some of the Carnegie data were rapidly made available to the Ministries of Health and Food for use in the preparation of wartime food policies. In addition, Orr and his son-in-law, David Lubbock, who had supervised of the Carnegie survey, published Feeding the People in War-time in April 1940, which included some of the dietary data.7 This publication was part of a process of lobbying by Orr and other scientists for a scientific wartime food policy. This campaign, coinciding with setbacks in the war, changes in government, and the government's need to improve public relations, led to the creation of a committee to advise the government on food policy, to which Orr and other outside experts were appointed. The Scientific Food Policy Committee was part of the cabinet's committee system, but it was soon superseded by an internal interdepartmental committee chaired by the chief medical officer of the Ministry of Health. Nevertheless, the Scientific Food Policy Committee helped to shift influence in food policy away from the Ministry of Agriculture and the agricultural lobby and towards the Ministry of Food.8
After difficulties early in war, British wartime food policy is generally regarded as having been a great success. But the population faced many inconveniences and there was a widespread expectation that, as soon as the war was over, rationing would be eased and the diet improved. In the event, food controls intensified. From August 1946 bread rationing was introduced for the first time, and between November 1947 and April 1948, a potato control scheme operated.9 In the light of the mounting controversy in the press about the effects of the food situation on health and productivity, in October 1947 the British Medical Association (BMA), decided to appoint a Nutrition Committee to prepare a report on the adequacy of wartime and post-war diet.10 Within government, senior Labour Party politician Herbert Morrison pressed upon the Prime Minister the advantages of reviving the Scientific Food Policy Committee. This, he suggested, would help the government to combat criticism with an announcement that scientists of unquestionable standing were advising the government on how to make the best of the food situation. However, the views of advisers who cautioned against the risk attached to involving outsiders prevailed.11
Orr had now left the Rowett to become director general of the Food and Agricultural Organisation, but the BMA invited his successor at the Institute, David Cuthbertson, to join their Committee. Cuthbertson declined the invitation, although he and Leitch, who was now director of what had become the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Nutrition, did provide some advice.12 It had been made clear to Cuthbertson that he had been appointed director of the Rowett to work on the nutrition of animals of agricultural importance and not on human nutrition.13 Animal nutrition research was the original role of the Institute,14 and it was only through support such as that from the Carnegie Trust, the establishment of the Imperial Bureau, and Orr's involvement in official policy making, that he had been able to conduct human work. Cuthbertson's response to the invitation to join the BMA Committee illustrates the new atmosphere in which nutrition scientists worked in the early post-war period. There was a pressure not to stray into high-profile policy questions and politics, and, in the agricultural research institutes, to concentrate on science which would enhance agricultural productivity. The fate of the research programme of Angus Thomson at the Rowett emphasizes the situation. Before the war he had been, with John Pemberton, one of the doctors employed for the clinical part of the Carnegie survey. After the war, he was engaged by the Institute for some research on pregnancy in the ewe, but found he was effectively forbidden to extend this into human work.13 By the time he spoke on Human fetal growth at the same Nutrition Society conference at which Leitch appeared in 1950, he had transferred to the Department of Midwifery at Aberdeen University.15 But as Leitch was employed by the Bureau rather than the Institute, she was free to work on a wider range of topics. However, the prevailing context meant that it would not be possible to revive at the Rowett a project along the lines of the Carnegie survey, and Leitch and her collaborators relied largely on data collected by others in their later publications on growth.2
The existence of the Nutrition Society in 1950 is another contrast between the pre- and post-war context. The Society had been formed after a group of nutrition workers had been meeting informally and sending documents on wartime food policy to government departments, offending Mellanby's sense of proper procedure. In response, Orr took an initiative in 1941 leading to the establishment of the Nutrition Society. All the early meetings were on practical themes related to wartime needs but after the war some of the conferences became less obviously policy-orientated, and the Society's journal also began to publish original articles as well as conference papers.13
In early 1950 the BMA Nutrition Committee reported, drawing conclusions that presented few challenges to the government. The health of the population, they declared, despite the trials and tribulations of recent years, has been well maintained.10 During the year the food situation began to ease, and public and political controversy began to abate, at least temporarily.9 The Nutrition Society meeting on Growth therefore took place at a time when nutrition was becoming less political, there was a trend towards the disengagement of nutrition science from politics and policy, and attempts were being made to look for and emphasize longer-term scientific agendas. Leitch's paper gave her an opportunity to demonstrate her own far-reaching scientific vision and shows that her contribution to the design of the Carnegie survey had given the exercise a permanent value, well beyond Orr's commendable but more immediate objectives.
References
1 Orr JB. Food, Health and Income. London: Macmillan, 1936.
2 Leitch I, Boyne AW. Recent changes in the height and weight of adolescents. Nutrition Abstracts and Review 1960;30:117386.
3 Verbatim minute of Physiological Sub-Committee Meeting, 28 April 1936, Public Record Office, MH 56/254.
4 Smith DF. The Carnegie Survey: background and intended impact. In: A Fenton (ed.) Order and Disorder. Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press, 2000, pp.6480.
5 Thomson AM. Obituary Notice Isabella Leitch 18901980. Br J Nutr 1981;45:14.[ISI][Medline]
6 Leitch I. Growth and health. Br J Nutr 1951;5:14251.[ISI]
7 Orr JB, Lubbock D. Feeding the People in War-time. London: Macmillan, 1940.
8 Smith DF. The rise and fall of the Scientific Food Committee during the Second World War. In: Smith DF, Phillips J. Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century: International and Comparative Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2000, pp.10116.
9 Zweiniger-Bargielowska I. Austerity in Britain: rationing, controls, and consumption, 19391955. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
10 British Medical Association. Report of the committee on nutrition. London: BMA, 1950.
11 Note for Record, 29 November 1947; H.M. to Prime Minister, 4 December 1947, Public Record Office, CAB 21/1742. The author wishes to thank Mark W Bufton for drawing his attention to this source.
12 Cuthbertson DP to C Hill, 19 November 1947, Welcome Institute Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, SA/BMA/G.53 Sc 33.
13 Smith DF. Nutrition in Britain in the Twentieth Century. PhD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1987.
14 Smith DF. The Agricultural Research Association, the Development Fund, and the origins of the Rowett Research Institute. Agricultural History Review 1998;46:4763.
15 Thomson AM. Br J Nutr 1951;5:15866.[ISI][Medline]