S. S. "Rajula", Bay of Bengal,
December 30, 1930.Dear Miss Turner,
Would you be good enough,a fter reading this great screed about Bangkok & Singapore, to send it on to my family, Mrs. M. C. Mason, 19 Paine St., East Aurora, N.Y.
It has been a great time & I'm awfully glad I went. It's true that I was a bit disappointed in the scientific end of the Congress; so few of the papers seemed to me really scientific. There were ever so many on the "incidence" of this disease or the "prevalence" of that or on the work of some institution. Dr. Rosedale's on rice polishings & beri beri was a good job. He has fractionated the vitamin in rice polishings into the anti neuritive which cures simply [sic] polyneuritis, not true beri beri, & another substance which if given in large enough quantities, will cure the true beri beri. This second substance is present in very small quantities; it closely resembles, & he told me afterwards that he thinks it is, Vitamin C.
A delightful Dutchman who is a great light in Java, Prof. de Langen, gave a paper on the influence of changes in electrical potential on acclimatization in the tropics. It's a fascinating idea to play with, that all the unpleasant feelings associated with the tropics occur when there is a fall in the potential; but he had no measurements other than "feelings" of people to go on.
Those were the ones that interested me most. I believe there were some very good ones on malaria but I didn't hear them. It was a disappointment that the three physiologists working on metabolism whom I had [lingered?] to meet, didn't come - Earle of Shanghai, & Radsma & van Berthout of Java. But it was a treat to see so much of Dr. Rosedale. He certainly has been kind to me, in his letters, at the Congress, & in Singapore. I am bringing back a nice little kit of volumetric glassware as a gift from him. I have none at all. It is simply sickening that he is leaving Singapore. I wish you could meet him. He will be out of a job now for a while but he'll be working at his proteins in Plimmer's labs at the St. Thomas' Hospital Medical College. He used to work with Plimmer before he came to Singapore, & adores him. He's been with McCollum too. His great interest is his proteins & amino acids, the sort of thing that Vickery is doing, but he's doing a good bit with vitamins and food analyses on the side which are very helpful to us out here. If you should be in London he would be awfully glad to see you. [Margin note: "He'll be there by the middle of March."] At present he has no address there but anything sent care of Plimmer would reach him, Dr. J. L. Rosedale. He has two papers in the last Biochemical Journal. He gave me awfully helpful criticism of our metabolism manuscript, and it was a pleasure to hear him say, "Scratch out the So. Hadley, Mass. Everyone who reads knows Mount Holyoke College. They work there."
He & Col. Stewart were both awfully nice about my paper. Col. Stewart didn't think the coeff. of correlation of much values without the probably errors, so I'm putting those in too. Your charts had come just before I left & I was ever so glad to have them.
I'm due in Madras Jan. 3rd. This is an awfully pokey trip.
Much love to you, Miss Turner,
from Eleanor.