Sherrington and industrial fatigue.

Abstract

In September 1915 the Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George, O.M. (1863—1945), set up the Health of Munition Workers Committee at the instigation of his Parliamentary Secretary, Dr Christopher Addison (1869—1951), who succeeded him as Minister in 1916 and in 1919 became the first Minister of Health (one of three medically qualified holders of this once important post, the other two being Walter Elliot and David Owen) (1). The Committee included Dr Walter Fletcher, F.R.S. (1873—1933), who in 1914 became the first Secretary of the Medical Research Committee at the suggestion of Dr T. R. Elliott, F.R.S. (1877—1961), the Committee having been established the previous year under Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act of 1911; Dr Leonard Hill, F.R.S. (1866—1952) was also a member. It may be mentioned that the Committee published in 1918 a report on the dietaries of munition workers (2) by Viscount Dunluce (1878—1932) and Capt. Major Greenwood, F.R.S. (1880—1949) which concluded: ‘The present provision of so many calories from fat and meat as could be made six months ago is no longer feasible. Fortunately, economic necessity and the teaching of physiology, however tentative the latter may be, do seem to point in the same direction. The substitution of energy derived from potatoes and cereals for a large portion of that yielded by fats and animal proteins would be a change that cannot scientifically be condemned’. This has been recently rediscovered by the NACNE Report (3).