The aim of the present book is to review the scientific substratum upon which rests the knowledge of nutrition both in health and in disease. Throughout, no statement has been made without endeavoring to give the proof that it is true.
The widespread interest in the subject of nutrition at the present time leads the author to hope that this book may prove of value to the student of dietetics and to the clinical physician.
Laboratory methods to explain the inner processes in disease have been applied to hospital patients for twenty years or more in Germany, but in the United States little has been done in this regard. If such investigations are in any way promoted by their discussion here this writing will not have been in vain.
On a previous occasion the author collected the more important information concerning the life history of the mineral constituents of the body for the American Text Book of Physiology, and the subject has been allotted limited space in this volume.
The author would apologize to all whose claims of priority of discovery have not been duly recognized. He wishes to express his great obligation to a former pupil, Dr. Margaret B. Wilson, who has painstakingly corrected the manuscript.
Graham Lusk
Physiological Laboratory, University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College,
New York, October 1, 1906.
full text of the Elements of the Science of Nutrition by Graham Lusk (1906)
