Nutrition research and education in the Age of Franklin. A Bicentennial study

Two hundred years ago, the United States was just emerging as a new nation. Chemistry and biology, on which the science of nutrition is based, were also just beginning or in their infancy. Dietetics and nutrition education, being applied sciences, were concerned then--as they are now--with the solution of practical problems of everyday living. Dietetics was an important part of medical practice in colonial days. Much of the teaching then about the value of diet in health and disease was provided by pithy statements, based on empiricism backed by authority, by which the science of medicine was taught to students, and by which health instruction was offered to the public. The experimental method of studying "Nature," promulgated by Francis Bacon, was just beginning to be employed in studies of nutrition. Delay in accepting experimental results, such as Lind's demonstration of the value of citrus fruits in the treatment of scurvy, may be attributed in part to a lack of understanding of the experimental method. In part, it may have been due to the absence of animal experimental methods that are capable of providing clear-cut and convincing evidence. Three of the greatest experimental scientists of the eighteenth century--Lavoisier, Count Rumford, and Benjamin Franklin--busied themselves with matters of concern to dietitians and home economists. Their work and that of others provided a firm foundation for the advances in scientific knowledge during the last two hundred years.