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traces its history back to 1952. PPNF publishes patients’ diets. The records and artifacts from his In 1940 Dr.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and will is- research are also archived at the Price-Pottenger
sue the 23rd edition of the book in summer 2015. Nutrition Foundation. Pottenger
Together with the Weston A. Price Foundation, founded a
founded in 1999 by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, EARLY PIONEERS hospital for
PhD, these two organizations keep the work of The course of nutrition science was driven
Dr. Price alive and relevant today. by history, politics and economics. During World treating lung
War I, just as later in World War II, women took diseases
FRANCIS M. POTTENGER, JR. the reins in business and industry, as well as where he
In conjunction with the work of Dr. Price, in nutrition science. Dr. Dame Harriette Chick
Dr. Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. (1901-1967), a (1875-1977), in charge of the Lister Institute promoted
California native and the son of a physician, was (Institute of Public Health) in London since the the use of
best known for his epigenetic work with genera- beginning of World War I, was concerned with the diet
tions of cats and diet, which is documented in the nutritional deficiency diseases of scurvy,
his book Pottenger’s Cats. From 1932 to 1942 beriberi and rickets, which often befell soldiers principles
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he conducted controlled experiments with over during military service and affected the course determined
nine hundred cats, involving three generations. not only of battles, but of history. (These diseases by Dr. Price.
Dr. Pottenger proved that cats eating fresh meat, had affected soldiers in the Civil War in America
raw milk, and cod liver oil remained healthy, as well. )
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whereas a group of cats eating heated milk and Along with her colleague, Dr. Elsie Dalyell
cooked meat began to develop health problems (1881-1948), Dr. Chick arrived in Vienna, Austria
and degenerative diseases within the first genera- in 1919 to minister to Vienna’s children. Vienna
tion. had been a glorious city and one of the world’s
Cats in the second and third generations major medical centers, but with the end of World
developed degenerative diseases earlier: they be- War I came the fall of the Hapsburg dynasty (a
came blind, weak, infertile, with hypothyroidism fixture since the 1200s) and war’s destructive
and soft bones, culminating in a short life span. aftermath of famine, disease, crime and insanity. 1
Allergies increased up to 90 percent in the cats Dr. Chick’s experiments with lab animals
fed processed foods versus only 5 percent in the showed that rickets was caused by nutritional de-
cats fed raw foods. Kittens of the third generation ficiency. She and her colleagues went to Vienna
of cats fed cooked foods suffered adverse person- in 1919 to assist with the many post-war cases
ality changes, with males exhibiting docility and of childhood rickets. The head of the Kinder
females aggressiveness. By the fourth generation Institute in Vienna, Professor Clemens von
the cats were sterile and could not reproduce. Pirquet, of Vienna University, as well as many
Dr. Pottenger also conducted a milk study other practitioners of the time and before him,
with the cats, using pasteurized, evaporated, believed rickets to be an infectious disease and
sweetened, condensed, and raw milk. Cats on so consequently no progress had been made in
raw milk thrived while cats on the other regimens curing the condition in two centuries. Many in-
sickened. The changes that Dr. Pottenger saw in fants and children were dying from the illness. In
the cats were similar to those observed by Dr. 1909, among infants aged eighteen months or less
Price in his world travels when groups abandoned who died, 96 percent were afflicted with rickets.
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their native diets and adopted diets of processed However, Dr. Chick, working with malnourished
foods. Some experts claim that today we are see- children in Viennese clinics, showed that rickets
ing the results of Pottenger’s fourth generation could be cured by the administration of whole
of cats in our younger generations of humans. milk and cod liver oil. 10,11
In 1940 Dr. Pottenger founded a hospital for Rickets, the “English disease,” was common
treating lung diseases, specifically asthma, where among impoverished urban children at that time
he promoted the use of diet principles determined not only in postwar Europe but also in America.
by Dr. Price. Butter, cream, raw milk, liver, cod The condition included soft bones, bandy and
liver oil, and eggs were the foundation of the bowed legs, deformed spines, dental caries,
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