Women's Christian College
Cathedral P.O., Madras, India,
February 27, 1932.Dear Miss Turner,
I have just written to the Editor of the Indian Medical Gazette giving him permission to send my last vital capacity paper to the Indian Journal of Medical Research. I sent the paper off to the Gazette as soon as I returned from the Science Congress in January, so they have had it for 6 weeks. They wrote a very nice letter, received today, praising the paper but saying they felt it should go into a research journal rather than the Gazette, and asking permission to send it to the Editor of that Jounral. The Research Journal (which published our metabolism paper) is undoubtedly the best journal in India, but they hold up papers an unconscionable time, so I sent it off to the Gazette. Now I feel annoyed with the Gazette for holding it up all this time. I hope they will gently encourage the other editor to get on with it! I finished the paper in October but conscientiously refrained from sending it for publication until it had been presented to the Science Congress. Others haven't done that. Some even read papers that had already appeared!
Sunday, Feb. 28th.
Meanwhile the weekly home-mail has come bringing lots of literature including piles of back nos. of the Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc. from Ruth Conklin's father, back nos. of Botany & Zoology jours. from Miss Snow at Wellesley, Physiol. Revs., The Mt. Holyoke Catalogue, & the last Alumnae Quarterly! Poor postman! But he has a little ponycart for this mail.
Miss Turner, none of my things since the old monograph with Metz & Moses have ever been reported in "Alumnae Publications." There have been 2 with Dr. Redfield - in the Jour. of Biol. Chem. & Amer. Jor. of Physiol. (Proceedings) - 1928; the Metabolism one with Dr. Benedict, 1931, & "The Vital Capacity of the Lungs of South Indian Women" in the "Proceedings of the Eighth Congress of the Far Eastern Assocation of Tropical Medicine. Bangkok. 1930." I hesitate to blow my own horn and ask Miss Haynes to publish them, but I think alumnae might be interested to know that some of Mount Holyoke's missionaries are also doing scientific work!
You have been most awfully good about writing me, Miss Turner, and I haven't even thanked you yet for your Christmas present. I am delighted to have the revised Bainbridge. Thank you much. How does the revision happen to be from Boston; did the English folks write them to do it? If so that is very nice.
I have been wanting to write you sheets & sheets & since there never seemed to be time for sheets & sheets no letter ever got written. There was a long one to Mother just after Christmas telling of my plague experiences in Bangalore that I asked her to send you; & I have asked D. Eliz. and Miss Stokey to share with you.
This is the season when my job as Secretary of our College Council (like the Board of Trustees) takes a lot of time. I had got the last minutes finishd & tho't I should breathe a bit when Edith (now Acting Principal) says we must have another Executive meeting at once. Groans from me! I like the job of trying to write good minutes & tend to correspondence, but there are other things I'm longing to use the time for.
I don't feel that this 4th of my 5 years has produced as much by way of good research as it should have. There was the big vital capacity labor during the 1st 3 or 4 mos. of it. That was work. But since then nothing seems to have been very successful. I have added a little more to the acclimatization data (by the way, will you, please, do Miss Stokey again some time & get her V. C. & reclining blood pressure at the same time?), have tried unsuccessfully to get a European to sleep for me, have done a few 24 hour studies of total N2 intake & output (& find the rest - a lot - in the feces) & tried a 12-day diet exp. on 2 subjects with absolutely no hot stuffs. (Diet otherwise like their usual.) That was wickedly hard work because I was absolutely single handed & was teaching at the same time, & I simply couldn't manage daily analyses of food, urine & feces. It was badly planned & I don't think the results are worth very much except to make me pretty certain that either chillies have no effect on absorption or, as I think much more likely, the effect is of such a lasting nature that it would take a much longer experimental period to demonstrate it. On the 3rd of my exper. diets last year (90 gms. of protein which is awfully high for here) fully 2/3 of the protein was from fish & milk, & there were only 50 gms. of rice in the diet. So I don't think arguments of bulk or of quality of protein can account for the fact that only about 60% of the N2 appeared in the urine. And I , eating the same diet, used no more N2 than they did. So if chillies are the cause, they take effect quickly when one [is] not used to them jumps onto them; but in the reverse direction? I must get some more data on myself on ordinary diet here. I want awfully to put my 2 subjects onto a European diet, but the domestic difficulties seem insurmountable. Oh, for a scientific colleague in the rôle of doctor or supt. of residence who would collaborate at least with sympathy! For the non-chilly diet I got my own cook & made all my arrangements but the room I used won't do for European cooking & I can't get a cook who can cook it or a student who can direct it. And these 2 are seniors starting their University exams in a fortnight. [doodle of a crying, pouting face] Darn! It would clear the matter of whether it is something in the diet other than chillies that interferes.
I'm having some correspondence with Dr. Carlson of Chicago on the subject of hot stuffs & digestive secretions. Hope I won't get into hot water with Harvard on that account! They're not friends, I believe. But I had to write to the one who seemed most likely to know about it.
At the present moment a young chemist from Aberdeen is helping me for 6 weeks & we are doing complete analyses, fat, fibre etc. of the 3 diets that I used last year. Then we weighed everything very carefully but used for calculations the analyses of Rosedale & McCarrison. I'll feel better to have it analyzed on the spot, to clinch calories & N2 intake. So far the nitrogens check the calculated nitrogen astonishingly well. But the fish & milk were not put into the general mess. The milk here is poorer but I don't know yet about the fish.
This summer I'm going to read. I've managed to find a place in the hills where I can get a nice sunny room with a fireplace, for myself, with congenial companions not far away to join up with for hiking. I shall take heaps of scientific literature & try to do some real study. The work to be done during furlough - for I can't get 2 years this time - looks stupendous just now. I could very profitably & happily spend the whole year reading for & writing up my thesis & looking around planning work for the next 5 years. I wish I could do just that. But there are those beastly prelims which will eat up half of the year. I'm awfully sorry Dr. Redfield won't be there. He's the only one I know well enough not to be scared off. He wrote me soon after he left but didn't suggest how his leaving would affect my plans. As he had expressed it a couple of years ago, "nominally." I was supposed to be working under his direction. Now that he is gone I should expect him to suggest someone else - perhaps Dr. Drinker - but he hasn't. Will you tell me what you think about it? It would be easier to slip into things there, I think, if there were someone to whom I were free to go for counsel, & I should think for the kind of work I'm in, Dr. Drinker would be the only one who could help me much thre. I wish So. Hadley were nearer to Harvard! Are you planning to go to Europe in the summer of '33, too? Because if you are I must get home early enough to have a good conference with you before you go. How I wish I could go to Rome this year & meet you all there! The actual time involved isn't any more than it was to Bangkok, but this one will be right in the middle of our term, & would, of course, be much more expensive. I haven't any program or dates - but of course it's out of the question.
Please give my love to Charlotte. She wrote me a nice note sometime ago which I've never answered. Madeleine seems to be booming, in print. Is she as enthusiastic as ever? I've had no word from Miss Holt for months. Not realizing she would be off before Xmas I sent her present to Brookline. I hope it is safe.
Much love to you, Miss Turner.
from Eleanor.