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CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.
University of Cambridge. School of Agriculture.
Institute of Animal Nutrition.
Dr. Thomas Deighton.
Now Deighton is running his own show. T. B. Wood has died and
Capstick is very seriously ill and I believe never comes to the
laboratory. Consequently Deighton is running around laying most
emphasis upon problems of an economic nature. The most unfortunate
thing is that Deighton has no adverse critic. Since my last visit
here he had been empowered by the authorities to take a trip to the
Continent and I found that he had visited Fingerling, Mj^llgaard, and
Lefèvre, and I am not sure about Zurich and Berlin. He had had no
experience in indirect calorimetry but had made this visit to
European laboratories and presented a very confidential report to the
British Ministry, including a rather harsh criticism of Lefèvre, and
he was most chagrined to think that the British Ministry permitted
Lefèvre to see a copy of this. He tried to get a copy for me but
the successor to T. B. Woods, F. W. H. Marshall, whom I had not met
personally, told Deighton that I could not have it. At present he
was distressed by the fact that the Minister of Agriculture had lost
interest or had "let down" in appropriations.
In a recent article Deighton had touched upon a theory of Rubner
on the question of length of life, death, and the potentialities of
life, much upon the basis that a man or animal had only a certain time
to live anyway and that with excessive activity he would be burned up
more quickly. This is interesting in connection with work proposed by
the Nutrition Laboratory in 1955 on Professor Sherman's rats.
Deighton is still obsessed with the idea of direct calorimetry
and he had made experiments on the cat. He is at present constructing
a compensation chamber for poultry, in which he is using cellophane
walls, their particular value being, according to him, that the poultry
will live normally in light. (See figures 7 7 > 7$> and 7?*) The
apparatus had also an elaborate electrical heating system and temperature
measuring system to maintain the walls at constant temperature. It
seemed to me rather hopeless. Although he had direct calorimetric
compensation chambers he wishes now to add the indirect to it. He felt
that 24-hour periods were necessary for poultry, but he also admitted
that poultry experiments were made primarily for political reasons, to
keep the interest of their farmer constituents.