(Witness: Wiley.)

keep a man skilled in dairy analysis anyway, for our general work, and we just let him do that work.

Last autumn, when the Bureau of Animal Industry was called on to provide for the enforcement of the meat-inspection act, we placed our whole force here and at all points at the disposition of that Bureau for a month.

The CHAIRMAN. Butter is considered as coming within the scope of the Bureau of Animal Industry, is it?

Doctor WILEY. Renovated butter is, by law. The execution of the law relating to renovated butter is divided between the Treasury Department and the Bureau of Animal Industry.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes.

Doctor WILEY. And the act of Congress provides that the chemical work shall be done in the Bureau of Chemistry. In that way we come right into contact with practical things in the execution of our work in the Bureau.

We also do all of the chemical work for the Bureau of Entomology. They are interested in insecticides. Some insecticides are good and some are bad. They want to know why. To find that out they have either got to set up a laboratory of their own or they have got to come to us. So they bring us their samples constantly, and under the law we are authorized to do their chemical work for them, and we are very glad to do it. And then comes the point.

I will send my men with theirs out into the field and apply these insecticides; and then we gather afterwards samples of the foliage and see how much injury has been done. We want to apply the insecticide in such a way as to kill the insect and save the plant. So we gather with them these samples, or bring them in. Then we make the analyses, and then collaborate with them, and we give them our data, or they give us their data, and we publish it together.

There is another point in which we come in direct practical contact with problems relating to practical agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you investigate in relation to the nutritive value of foods?

Doctor WILEY. We do not do much in regard to the nutritive. value of foods, because that matter is confided by Congress to another branch of the Department of Agriculture. The nutrition investigations are put in the Office of Experiment Stations, and we do not do any of that work. That is done mostly by other chemists, but not in the Department of Agriculture. They get chemists out in the States to do that at different places. We study the foods in relation to their unwholesomeness rather than their nutrition. That is our great work. That is one of the most important works that we do, and we do that by express authority of Congress.

For instance, we are not so much interested-of course we are interested, but not under our law-in whether this food is more nutritious than that, but in what is the effect of this food upon the health when you eat it. Our inquiry is as to wholesomeness rather than nutritive value; but of course you can not separate the idea of wholesomeness from the nutritive value. A food that is nutritious is presumably wholesome. A food that is not nutritious is presumably unwholesome.

The CHAIRMAN. So that those two lines run into each other?

(Witness: Wiley.)

Doctor WILEY. Those two lines run into each other, but we do not duplicate the work of the Office of Experiment Stations at all. That work is a very excellent work, and was done formerly under the supervision, as you know, of Doctor Atwater, one of the most eminent physiological chemists of the world, who is now unhappily incapacitated by a paralytic stroke. But his successor, Professor Benedict, is also a most eminent and successful investigator, and that work is done under his supervision, and done excellently well. I think in this case, as in the other (and I have suggested this to the Secretary of Agriculture), that it might be well if that work were attached to my bureau rather than to the Office of Experiment Stations, which is not intended by the law to do any such work, and which has just dropped into it you know how such things are. But I do not think I could do the work any better, nor would I get any other kind of people to do it. If I were choosing the people to do it, I would choose just the people that are doing it, but I think I could give them some good points, and I have no doubt that they could give me good points. As it is, we are totally separate, just as though there was a wall between us. I do not know what Doctor Benedict is doing, and he has no idea of what I am doing. He may be doing what I am doing, for anything I know, or I may be doing what he is doing.

The CHAIRMAN. And those are, of course, two subjects that almost inevitably blend?

Doctor WILEY. They are so closely related that of all others it seems to me they ought to come under some common direction.

The CHAIRMAN. You can not have one of those subjects without articulation with the other, practically.

Doctor WILEY. They must come together more or less intimately, but we do not do any of that work, nor, so far as we know, do they do any of our work. We carefully avoid it.

The CHAIRMAN. You have been making digestive experiments, I understand. That is on the line of wholesomeness, is it not?

Doctor WILEY. That is entirely different from the experiments that are made under Doctor Benedict's supervision-although his are digestive experiments, too, but for a different purpose altogether. Shall I explain that part of my work now?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; in just a moment. Then those two results could be both reached at the same time without additional expense, could they not? That is, the results relating to nutrition and the results relating to wholesomeness could be obtained from the same patient, at the same time, in connection with the same subject-matter? Doctor WILEY. That might be very well done, and with considerable economy, in my opinion. But the work of my Bureau is strictly defined by Congress, and I never transgress it so far as I know. I am always very respectful to Congress, and confine my work to what is authorized. But my work is definitely outlined by Congress-that is, to study the effect of preservatives, colors, and other substances added to foods, upon health and digestion; not the effect of foods upon health and digestion, but the effects of the things that are added to foods, and I confine myself strictly to that line of investigation. The CHAIRMAN. That is, the adulterative processes?

Doctor WILEY. The effect of adulterations on health, in other

(Witnees: Wiley.)

words; while Doctor Benedict studies the effect of foods in general upon nutrition-presumably pure foods.

I have explained briefly and given you an illustration of what we do in collaboration with other branches of the service in our own department. I will now try to outline the work that we are doing independently of anybody else in our department.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Doctor WILEY. First, I may go right on with this idea of foods. The studies made by the Bureau of Chemistry of the effects produced upon health by the addition of preservatives and colors to foods have resulted in an annual saving of $5,000,000. This is now the fifth year that we have been testing the effect upon health and digestion of preservatives and colors and other substances that have been commonly used in our foods. To do that we engage the services of young men who agree to eat these foods with these added substances. They are told exactly what they may expect or may not expect, and they sign a pledge that they will obey strictly the rules and regulations. We use only persons in the Department, and chiefly those in our own Bureau. Sometimes we do not have enough, and we go out to other bureaus and get these young men. We feed them. They enlist for a year. They take a pledge that they will stay with us for a year, and they are young men whose characters are unimpeachable. We not only know that they have passed the civil-service examination, but if we do not know them ourselves we get from their employers, their chiefs, statements respecting their reliability. In the 50 or 60 young men we have had, Mr. Chairman, in the last five years, only 3, that I know of, have ever violated their pledges, and those only partially. Three men, we found, had eaten things that we had not given them in that time, and in that way had violated the pledges that they gave us.

The CHAIRMAN. Do they get any additional compensation for undergoing these experiments?

Doctor WILEY. None whatever. They get their food free, but no more compensation.

The CHAIRMAN. It simply gives them their board?

Doctor WILEY. Their board; and they richly earn it, too, because they not only have to eat what we give them, which is weighed out to them, but they agree to eat it all, whether they want it or not; and they agree not to eat any more than we give them, no matter how hungry they may be.

The CHAIRMAN. It is an absolutely arbitrary regimen?

Doctor WILEY. Because we have to have a uniform regimen; and they are sometimes made ill, though not seriously. We never push them to anything that is serious.

The CHAIRMAN. You intend to keep watch of their physical condition, of course?

Doctor WILEY. Oh, they are watched very carefully. I am a physician myself, and I take charge of their medical treatment. They are examined carefully every day.

The CHAIRMAN. You might explain some of those experiments in detail, so that we will get a notion of how that is done.

Doctor WILEY. I can do that briefly. These men are first allowed to eat of wholesome food. We buy the best in the market; it is

(Witness: Wiley.)

carefully inspected by myself, and all analyzed besides. We buy the very best that the market affords; and they have what we call a preliminary period that is, they eat for about ten days a ration which we weigh out to them, and we vary that ration so that they do not either gain or lose in weight. That is what we call the normal ration, which keeps them in their normal condition. Then we set that for the rest of the experiment. That is the set ration. They must eat that ration thereafter. Then we begin by adding to that a certain small quantity of one of the common preservatives, like borax, say. We add half a gram of borax a day to this food. They eat that for five or ten days. Then we increase it, say, to a gram, and they eat that for another ten days.

The CHAIRMAN. Meanwhile you are keeping a record of this?

Doctor WILEY. We keep a record of everything. All their excreta are collected and analyzed, the urine and the feces, just as carefully as the food that they eat; so there is nothing wasted. If they trim their finger nails, they have to bring the trimmings to us, or if their hair is cut they bring us the hair, so we can keep track of the income and outgo, just as you keep a bank account. In that way we can determine whether these things disturb the natural progress of affairs-what we call the metabolism, the process of the digestion-and we keep that up until we make them ill, until we produce some effect, some disturbance of some kind. Then we put them on the same ration and observe them for ten or fifteen days longer, to see that they are restored to their normal condition.

All this requires an enormous amount of analytical work; and yet it is the only way, Mr. Chairman, in which these great questions can be answered. You can theorize about it just as much as you please, but the facts must be ascertained before we can come to any final decision.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, you have to introduce these substances into the animal organism before you know what their real effect is going to be?

Doctor WILEY. Before you know what their real effect is going to be.

That has occupied, during the last five years, quite a large per cent of our energy. I suppose 15 or 20 per cent of all the work we have done in the Bureau has been in that line. We have gone through that process, not only with borax and with boric acid, but with salicylic acid and salicylates, benzoic acid and benzoates, sulphurous acid and sulphites, formaldehyde, and sulphate of copper. They have all been tried in this way, over long periods of time, until we got results which satisfied us one way or the other.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you reached ultimate results?

Doctor WILEY. We have come to a conclusion on all these substances.

The CHAIRMAN. You have come to a conclusion?

Doctor WILEY. We have come to a conclusion on all these substances. We have others under way now. We are now getting ready to work on saltpeter-what is the effect of saltpeter on the system.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any chemical bureaus that are engaged in similar experimentation and investigation?

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(Witness: Wiley.)

Doctor WILEY. Nowhere in the world, in so far as I know. The CHAIRMAN. So that you have no other investigations to measure yours with?

Doctor WILEY. No. There have been desultory experiments made on one or two men for a few days at a time.

The CHAIRMAN. Do scientific men elsewhere avail themselves of your work under these circumstances?

Doctor WILEY. They do; all over the world. I have just read in the London Lancet where some man published a little paper and said that the results obtained by Doctor Wiley were false. and he cited one experiment he made, lasting for about two days. The Lancet replied that before anybody would believe any such statement as that, the man must make an experiment as elaborate as that of Doctor Wiley, and as carefully controlled. The Lancet simply dismissed the whole thing without giving it any attention

at all.

That work we have done for all these substances. We used 12 young men; we keep a corps of 12. Just now we are only using 6, because we had to cut down the size of our dining room, as we had to use it for some other purposes. We are using 6 now; but with our experience we can do about as well with 6 as we could in the beginning with 12, so that I do not think it interferes with the value of our results.

All of those things, we have found, are injurious to health, even in small quantities. We have not simply theorized about it, but we have proved it; and that is what people want. They want proof; they want facts.

The CHAIRMAN. Is this injury to health manifested principally, throughout your experiments, by loss of weight, or by an increase in an anæmic condition, or in what way?

Doctor WILEY. They have affected the system in many different ways; nearly always in loss of weight. In one or two cases there was no appreciable loss of weight, but very marked disturbances of other kinds. Loss of appetite is one of the things which we have to fight against, and lassitude, mental hebetude.

The CHAIRMAN. Is not that to a certain extent due to the monotony of the diet you have to give them?

Doctor WILEY. No; our diet is varied every day. We do not have the same things. We have a better diet than you get at a first-class boarding house, and a more varied diet. We use the same amount of food materials each day, however the same value of nutrients. No; there is no doubt of the fact that it is due to the specific effects of the various preservatives; and these are manifested in a way which would be wholly undetected by the ordinary observer. They are subtle effects on disturbed metabolism which change the ratio of the income to the outgo.

For instance, in boric acid we found that boric acid caused a very large increase in the excretion of phosphoric acid. Now, that could only be done in one way, and that was by breaking down the phosphoric tissues of the body-the brain, the nerves, and the bones. We found that while in the normal excretion of phosphoric acid we could recover, say, 95 per cent of all ingested in the food in the fore period, when we began to give borax they were excreting 105 per cent—that is, 5 per cent more than was in the food; and that