Walter S. McClellan

A number of evidences indicate a mechanism of adaptation to ketosis. In our Eskimo studies it is observed that the degree of ketonuria is less than what is normally observed in Whites on a similar diet. On the other hand, an Eskimo soldier who had lived for several months on the normal Army mess rations excreted the same amounts of acetone as the normal white soldiers when given a "ketogenic" diet. In the subjects studied by McClellan and DuBois (1930) the ketonuria diminished after several months on a carbohydrate-free diet

The general scope of the investigation was outlined in 1926 and 1927 by an advisory committee of scientists of which Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, was chairman. The main portion of the work was carried on while the two subjects lived and ate in the metabolism ward of the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology in Bellevue Hospital, New York. The study was a cooperative one and several papers on various phases of the work have already been published. Short reports on the clinical features and general laboratory findings have been made by Lieb (9) and by McClellan (10). The excretion of acetone bodies has been discussed in papers on ketosis by McClellan, Spencer, Falk, and Du Bois (11) and by McClellan and Toscani (12). The chemical studies on the constituents of the blood have been presented by Lieb and Tolstoi (13) and by Tolstoi (14, 15). References to the above papers will be made later in this report. A series of three papers, of which this is the first, will present the observations made in the ward, calorimeter, and laboratories of the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology.

Two normal men volunteered to live solely on meat for one year, which gave us an unusual opportunity of studying the effects of this diet. The term “meat,” as used by us, included both the lean and the fat portions of animals. The subjects derived most of their calories from fat and the diet was quite different from what one, who uses the term “meat” as including chiefly lean muscle, would expect. Rubner called attention to the fact that a man cannot live on meat alone because of the physical limitation of the apparatus of mastication. He was evidently considering only lean meat as fat offers little difficulty. It is well known that the Eskimos have lived on an almost exclusive meat diet for generat.ions. Certain explorers in the North also have subsisted for long periods on meat. Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson in particular has demonstrated that it is feasible for travelers in the arctic region to “live off the country,” which means living on meat alone. The experiences of Stefansson and his companions have been given in his book “The Friendly Arctic”. He spent over 11 years in arctic exploration, during 9 years of which he lived almost exclusively on meat. Stimulated by this experience, Stefansson and Andersen, the latter a member of one of the expeditions, voluntarily agreed to eat nothing but meat for 1 year while they continued their usual activities in the temperate climate of New York.