Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2313

ELMER VERNER MACCOLLUM (1879-1967) The newer knowledge of nutrition. Macmillan 1918 ix [3] 199 [6] pp., 11 plates, 16 graphs. 18.8 cm.

A native of Kansas, McCollum studied chemistry at the University of Kansas and continued on to receive a Ph.D. in the same subject from Yale in 1906. Although his primary field of interest was organic chemistry, McCollum spent the greater part of his professional career in the field of nutrition studying vitamins and other trace nutrients. He discovered vitamins A and D and also provided evidence of the water-soluble B vitamins. McCollum was the first to use rats as subjects for experimental studies of nutrition and developed the biological assay of dietary constituents. He was committed to public education on dietary matters and for twenty-five years wrote a popular column containing nutritional advice for McCall's magazine. During 1918 McCollum presented the Thomas Clarence Cutter Lectures at Harvard Medical School, in which he discussed the application of modern research to the problems of human nutrition. As a result of the enthusiastic reaction to the lectures, he adapted them into the present work saying that their publication "would serve to answer many of the questions which have been asked in numerous letters from the public" (p. vii). The book met with great success and appeared in five editions by 1939.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 1052

Gift of William B. Bean, M.D