Medicine: On an Empty Stomach

G.I.s overseas in wartime had two pet chow-line peeves: 1) powdered milk, 2) powdered eggs. Last week, at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago, the combination was hailed as a lifesaver. The reason: thousands of G.I. ex-prisoners of the Germans might have died in U.S. rehabilitation camps but for the discovery that the stomach of a starving man, which rejects meat, cheese or whole milk, can accept much-needed protein in its blandest form.

Reported Dr. Herbert Pollack of Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital, formerly the Army’s chief medical consultant in the ETO: the powdered-milk-&-egg mixture, which is 50% whole protein, was fed to 92,000 liberated G.I.s, of whom 40% were suffering from severe malnutrition, and another 40% were undernourished. Only eight died (a few others were killed by kindness when sympathetic soldiers and civilians threw them indigestible foods as they rode westward from Germany). Wounded and post-operative patients, fed this same bland mixture, were up & about in a third less time than had been customary. Pollack’s prediction: the new diet will end doctors’ traditional tolerance for patients who dawdle over their convalescence. Furthermore, adds he optimistically, it tastes wonderful — just like ice cream.