The obvious question, to what extent the benefits of increased intakes of various nutrients can be added to each other in the same individual, will require several years' experimentation to answer. Clearly, this is an important and promising field for further research. Meanwhile vitamin C offers a different kind of clear-cut illustration of a wide zone between the minimal and optimal intakes, with presumably corresponding opportunity for constructive improvement of life histories. That three such different substances as vitamin C, calcium, and vitamin A should each show a strikingly increased benefit from increased intake above levels commonly accepted as adequate is important evidence that such nutritional improvability is of broad and far-reaching significance. Clearly, it is advantageous to the internal environment that concentration levels of these three nutrients be kept near the physiological saturation point. But it would be unscientific to assume that the same is true of all other nutrients. Each should be investigated on its own merits and with adequate numbers of experiments throughout entire life cycles and successive generations of properly chosen laboratory animals. It may be many years before all nutrients shall have been studied com-
pletely at different levels and in different combinations. But meanwhile the knowledge of vitamins A and C and of calcium may well be set to work more actively lor human well-being by shifting of emphases within customary and acceptable dietary patterns to raise the nation-wide intake levels of these nut rients. Brevity forbids the review here of the very impressive British investigations of the nutritional improvement of children's development resulting from extra rations of protective foods. There is also important evidence directly from human adults. In clinical work, the relation of diet to incidence of degenerative disease or premature aging has been studied by obtaining dietary histories and comparing these with the clinical findings. In a systematic study of 501 patients examined in the same physician's office and charted on percentage of food calories taken in the form of "protective foods," although there was room for argument on some points of medical terminology, there seemed no room for doubt of the general relationship. One could leave out all use of medical terms and say: The higher the percentage of protective food in the diet, the lower the percentage of failures in the preservation of the characteristics of youth.
Whether the extra years of life now so clearly offered by today's knowledge of nutrition be conceived as 7 or 10 or more or less, they should always b e pictured not as added to old age but as inserted at the apex of the prime of the life which is guided by the new c h e m istry of nutrition. Clearly this adds much to the prospect of the accomplishment of life's ambitions. Liberating Effect Thus, recent research in the field of food and nutrition has both brought a rapid succession of important discoveries of substances and properties previously unknown and has had an outstandingly liberating effect. The findings of several hundreds of entirely objective and carefully controlled experiments have shown with statistical conclusiveness that nutritional improvement of the norm is practicable. We nerd no longer be hampered by those inhibiting concepts which exaggerated the chemical specificity of species and the supposed fixité of the body's internal environment. We now have ample experimental evidence that both the chemistry of the internal environment at a given time, and the normal average human life history as a whole, can be improved by the use of the findings of recent chemical research.
International Organization of Chemists MARSTON TAYLOR BOGI:RT,
limeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, Ν. Υ.
The past 90 years has seen steadily increased fellowship among chemists of all nations · · · The war proved that much could he accomplished hy cooperation in scientific research and led' naturally to a desire for closer international postwar relations J-N TUB belief that the international or ganization of chemists is of importance in the winning of the peace and the develop ment of a better mutual understanding and appreciation between nations, I shall at tempt to review briefly for you the history of some of these organizations and more particularly those in which our American chemists have been, or are currently, in terested and active. In the Aug. 23, 194S, issue of CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING N E W S , there is an
in
teresting editorial on ''Historical Chemical Backgrounds'' which contains the follow ing paragraph: It is unfortunate that the curricula of our colleges and universities do not con tain more formal courses in chemical his tory. The accomplishments and the lives of such men as Remsen, Perkin, Victor Meyer, Moissan, van't IIorT, Hamsay, liichards, Kuril Fischer, and others would provide great inspiration at the most formative period in the lives of the future chemists of the world. It is also unfortu
1992
nate that the Society's Division of History of Chemistry does not receive more wide spread support. We should be proud of the heritage that we have received, and we should know more of the background and accomplishments of those who have pre ceded us and who laid the foundations of the chemical profession and the chemical industry as we know and enjoy it today. It seems appropriate, therefore, to tievote some attention to the first of all these international chemical congresses, which was that held in Karlsruhe,
