Missionaries of science: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America

sexual activity both resulted from meat-eating. In the early days of this century, a similar debate turned on human dietary standards and the relative importance of protein and as yet unidentified trace nutrients. Finally, of course, the troubled postwar episode of the worldwide protein shortage shifted the level of controversy from the laboratory into the realms of application and policy. Expensive, complex, and largely futile in terms of improved nutrition for the poorest people of the world, the impact of nutritional theory was maximized by the postwar emergence of nutrition and planning experts, international agencies and committees, and international commercial interests. Carpenter's avowed aim is to link the past to the present, but throughout he discusses problems and questions in their contemporary context: wider themes and conclusions are considered in the final, retrospective, chapter. The issues considered here are suggestive, and deserve more extensive exploration, perhaps within a broader treatment of nutrition history. Complexity, falsifying hypotheses, over-extended generalizations, the "great man" syndrome, the contribution of women, and the conduct of controversy are recognized themes in the history of science; committees and their consequences, the responsibilities of applied scientists and the dangers of enthusiasm perhaps apply more particularly to nutrition. A side-swipe at popular "alternative" nutritionists, who pontificate from a position of complete ignorance of the elementary chemistry and physiology of digestion, together with Carpenter's final, personal assessment of human dietary needs, remind the reader that nutrition remains perhaps the only science that speaks directly and personally to the preferences and practices of the individual. This valuable new book explores the role of the Rockefeller Foundation in the evolution of health and agriculture in Latin America from the 1910s to the 1960s. Five of the chapters look at public health, medicine and scientific education and research, two at agriculture. The Foundation provided assistance with campaigns against selected epidemic and endemic diseases, developed public health institutions (especially laboratories), played a part in modernizing public education in medicine and nursing, and stimulated investigations of themes of general interest that ranged from yellow fever studies to high-altitude research in Andean Peru. Contributors to the volume range from Thomas F Glick, well-known for his writings on the history of science in Latin America, to two doctoral candidates, Joseph Cotter and Steven C Williams. The editor, Marcos Cueto, contributes valuable chapters that examine the ways in which the Foundation used national surveys as the basis of …