Yercaud, Shevaroy Hills, So. India.
Sunday afternoon, April 7, 1929.
Dear Miss Turner,
Your good letter of Mar. 2 came today and has made me so excited that I must write you at once. That year's leave of yours - Miss Turner dear, won't you consider Madras? You will not have so much to build on for Indian women as for Chinese women because so very little work has been done but the help that you could give in this study of race and tropics would be tremendous. There is so much involved besides race - what is race, anyway? - and the climatic effect is a most fascinating field.
Miss Wilson of the Nutrition Lab has just sent me that part of the text of Dr. Benedict's foreign lecture in which he refers to my work here and I am feeling a little cross with him for speaking so definitely when I myself am feeling that there is a very, very long row to hoe before we can interpret these results with any conviction. He says, after reference to Betsy's work: "In cooperation with Prof - (me) of the W. C. College at Madras, India, measurements have been obtained during the past year upon a no. of female Tamils. Each woman was studied on at least 2 days and in some instances on four days, representing from 4 to 10 periods of measurement. The condition of nutrition, as indicated by the pelidisi, was good in all cases. We have found, as will be seen from this slide, that these Tamil's have a heat production on the average 19% lower than the standards for American women. This finding comfirms our conclusion concerning Oriental women, namely that the metabolism may be lower with some races than it is with others."
You see that he makes no reference at all to my measurements on European women here whose average I make -14% as compared with -18% for Tamils. His calculations are of course all Harris-Benedict & mine DuBois but as the summaries of my work have come back to me from Boston it has appeared to me that they have used his new standards (5% lower) in recalculating the Europeans & not for the Indians. I have written Miss Wilson to inquire since I have not had time to play with the figures myself.
His remark about the nutritive state seems to me very startling for it is certainly not my impression of my subjects. However it is a comfort to realize that among my -20% to -30%ers I have all kinds, well nourished and otherwise.
My own metabolism was done again this week & I am glad to find that it is approximately the same as in August, then -19%, now -18, compared with -8 a year ago in Boston. B. Cosmey, too, is approximately the same as she was in October, -17%, while Louise Crow, now gone back to Canada, came up to -6 in March from -17 in September. She was -1 in Toronto last May.
Of the circulatory (prolonged standing & Schneider) I've done satisfactory ones on only 2 subjects, an English girl, metab. -10% who fainted, & an Indian, metab. -19%, who didn't. There is so little time but next year I hope to make the metabolism & standing tests work in together more, even though it means showing up the accumulation of metabolism data. I have done over 50 subjects, of whom I think 35 or 36 are Indians. Dr. Benedict is keen to get some of my low Indians sleeping to see whether the low metab. may be due simply to a greater degree of repose & therefore psychological rather than physiological but so far I have succeeded only in dozes, not in real sleep. But I get awfully keen over the whole problem & am dying for conversation with you on Dr. Benedict or Dr. DuBois, who by the way, wrote me from England recently, a very nice letter, asking if I were getting nitrogens,too. That I want awfully to do, but I should have to practice a lot to be sure of my technique & then would have no time for it.
You ask about anthropometric measurements. There was a German couple here while I was on furlough, both anthropologists & excellent ones, I judge, who made many measurements on So. Indian peoples both men & women. I wrote to Baron von Eickstedt Director of Anthropological Institute, Breslau Univ. asking if his measurements would present any excuse for the very low vital capacities of my Indian subjects. His wife replied that he had not yet returned from his trip but that he would send me a reply as soon as he had worked up his material.
Now - if only you could come and pitch into whatever field seemed to you most fruitful it would be florious. The situation in college would be this - that we would - we hope & feel almost certain - be starting the advanced physiology in 1930, July. That means that that year there would be only one advanced class which you would take, I hope. I plan to have two lectures & 4 to 5 hours lab a weekf or the two years. Whether or not you would also take the Intermediate physiology which is only 2 hours a week altogether would be entirely as you wish. I would keep on with the advanced Zoology with probably an assistant as now. I think that with the small department and without the 101 other responsibilities that you have there you would find that you had a lot of time for research. It would be ripping for our new physiology to have you in on it fromt he beginning and it would be a tremendous help to me to work with you that year in the planning of it and in running the lab. I shall be sending the new apparatus list for Government sanction before July 1st of this year but shall not start working on it until I go back to Madras the latter part of June. If you have any suggestions I should be very glad to have them. The catalogues I have besides Thomas & Baird & Tatlock are one[s] Betty Bright sent me, somewhere in Michigan I think, & an English one that begins with H-. Sorry I don't remember them. We have budgeted about $500 for initial equipment and $150 for books. The class will be small, probably not more than 5 or 6, so that we needn't have duplicate sets of all the apparatus. I had to make a small budget because our finances are so pinched but with the annual allowance of about $250 we shall be able to add each year. The Histology equipment is complete, I think.
It happens that we have just voted a scholarship to one of our Zoology graduates to work for her M.A. in Madras, at Presidency College, in the hope that she will take over our Zoology when I do the Physiology. But she will have to spend two years at it so she couldn't be ready before 1931 anyway and if you could come for the year '30-'31 it would fit in most beautifully. The college would pay salary here and probably a share of the passage money as they did for Miss Wells. And since we close in early April you would have a long holiday for travel or work before you needed to be back in So. Hadley. Oh, I so hope you will consider it.
Isn't it awfully nice that Miss Stokey is coming? Would you have time to get her metabolism & do a prolonged standing test on her before she leaves? I want to write her, but haven't done so yet. Miss McDougall wrote last week, I think.
How has your back been this year? I'm sorry you caught the flu bug. Is it as bad as formerly for leaving you good-for-nothing afterwards?
I have been very well all this year - one tiny touch of dengue fever is the only catastrophe of any sort. Now there is a long holiday ahead in which I am going to do Tamil. That I haven't touched since I came back but I hope that by concentrating on it this summer with good teaching I can really get somewhere with it. I have faint dreams of an exam in November but that all remains to be seen. I shall not kill myself over it anyway.
D. Elizabeth will be disgusted with me for not doing anything exciting this summer but one can't do everything at once & if I do metabolisms during the year this is the only time for Tamil. It looks like an awfully profitable summer to me for I am to be here with the Larsens until about May 20th. We are absolutely the only Europeans in the place for 3 miles around & even those at that distance are strangers so it is excellent for work undisturbed by calls & invitations out & with real work several hours a day there is still time for much play and reading. The day goes something like this - chotah [?] at 8 o'clock, then Gjertrud sees the cook & arranges for the day while Dr. Larsen plays (no - really works!) around in the garden & I look after the flowers for all the vases. By about 9 o'clock we're ready to settle down to work, I at Tamil & they at translating one of his books ("Christ's Way & Ours" which D. has) into Danish. Breakfast is about noon and after that I shall have a Tamil lesson with Dr. Larsen while Gjertrud types the morning's work. I'm most awfully lucky to be having him for a teacher with his great keenness for language & sympathy & insight into Tamil life & thought. There will still be time for an hour's sleep before tea (that I never get in the plains) at 4 o'clock. After tea we go for good long walks over the hills for it doesn't get dark till nearly seven and after dinner when we're not writing letters we read aloud. At present we are doing a most beautiful life of St. Teresa written by a Spanish woman, but the summer's stock includes all kinds - from Winnie the Pooh to 3 volumes of the Russian Revolution! That is in Danish & they'll leave it till I'm gone & I'm not too sorry but I do wish I could share Selma Lagerlöf with them in Swedish. They say her charm is quite lost in translation.
It is so nice to have leisurely meals with plenty of time for conversation. Teas area joy as we sit on the verandah with a most lovely view of hills and plains before us and all sorts of interesting things under discussion. One cannot but become concerned with matters of the spirit in India and in a missionary college, and there are so many puzzling things. Really I think I knew nothing of real Christian life before I came to India and I often wonder where the falut was, that I could go through school and college with so little, shockingly little, real thought about the religion I professed. Here much of what I lightly took for granted has been discarded and the upward climb from almost nothing is slow, but, I believe, real. It is the Larsens to whom I owe most here, chiefly from sharing their daily living, and occasionally from talks on things that seem especially baffling. Dr. L. last week had a letter from a young American missionary (the husband of Ruth Wilder, by the way) who has been invited to go with Dr. Stanley Jones on his next speaking tour thru India. This man had been present at a meeting in which Dr. Larsen had spoken, and evidently having recognized there something very real has written to him for suggestions for a study of Christian experiences.
It is most interesting to compare the Danish (& other continental) attitude with our American one. They think us hopelessly sentimental in our religion, that we have a soft pollyannaish religionwhich is very third-rate. Dr. Stanley Jones, an American Methodist, has been tremendously successful with meetings in which he has spoken only of his own personal Christian experience; on the other hand Dr. L. with an unmeasurable influence here in So. India never refers to his own experience. The two attitudes came into direct conflict at the big world student conference here at Christmas, with Max Yergan, an American negro & other Americans at one extreme & the continentals at the other, British about midway. The Indians are, I think, inclined to side with the American & there Dr. L. feels a great danger of too much idealism. I hope to understand his viewpoint better before the summer is over.
Now it is Tuesday morning, mail day, & I believe this letter is going on forever. You'll need a day off to read it! Before I forget - your question about soda lime. I do test frequently with Ba(OH)2 & am glad to find that the change is sudden enough so that it seems to me most unlikely that I could let a subject get by with two days on defective soda lime. I happened to be subject myself just at the time this last lot was finishing. There was one excellent day of 4 periods, 3 of them 158 cc/min. The next day, equally good as far as the experiment went, was low, ranging about 145 cc/min & not checking quite so well. That of course meant a 3rd day to see what the real level was & on that day the respiration was markedly stimulated & the Ba(OH)2 test showed soda lime ring. [?] I am convinced that you cannot get two good checking days unless the soda lime is O.K. The 4th day, with fresh soda lime gave results checking excellently with the first.
Anyhow to be doubly sure I have done an alcohol check on the apparatus. It was a great struggle to rig up the apparatus & make it work with the materials I had at hand, but the pump from the student apparatus that Dr. Benedict gave me made a very good substitute for the 2nd spirometer & the results of five runs ranged from 99.4 to 105.6% of the theoretical. Considering that the apparatus was home-made I think the results are good; certainly they demonstrate that the apparatus does not give too low results. I got Mr. Barnes, Chemist at the Men's Christian College, to help me with the actual experiment after I got it working so that there would be a reliable witness in case my results are challenged here! I enclose a picture of the apparatus.
How is Dr. Clapp? I am awfully glad for her sake that you will be at Woods Hole. I wrote her a birthday letter and I hope she may find time to write this summer. She is such a dear.
D. Eliz. being deaconess tickles me to pieces. I'd have given my best hat to see her! I hope she is staying with you next year. Is Miss Smith really coming to India? It's the first I've heard about it. How awfully nice.
This place is lovely and the birds all about the verandah where I sit keep me on the jump. The saucy red-whiskered bulbuls are lilting & tilting all about and the barbets & blackbirds and hoopoes & any no. of others come & go. I love it, Miss Turner.
Very much love to you, always,
Eleanor
Yesterday's mail brot [sic] "The Fuel of Life" from the Brookline folks. Doesn't Folin take the opposing stand to McLeod? I'm not sure.