Francis M. Pottenger, Jr.

Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. (1901 - 1967) was the son of Francis M. Pottenger, Sr., the physician who co-founded the Pottenger Sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis in Monrovia, California.

He completed his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital in 1930 and became a full-time assistant at the Sanatorium. From 1932 to 1942, he also conducted what became known as the Pottenger Cat Study.

In 1940, he bought some of the cottages from the Monrovia sanatorium and founded the Francis M Pottenger, Jr. Hospital. Until closing in 1960, the 42-bed hospital specialized in treating non-tubercular diseases of the lung, especially asthma.

Work

One particular question that Pottenger addressed in his study had to do with the nutritive value of heat-liable elements—nutrients destroyed by heat and available only in raw foods.

He applied the principles of nutrition and endocrinology early in his practice. Dr. Pottenger was a pioneer in using crude extracts of adrenal cortex as supplements to treat allergic states and exhaustion. In his treatment of respiratory diseases such as TB, asthma, allergies and emphysema, he always highlighted proper diet based on the principles discovered by Weston Price. At his hospital, he served liberal amounts of liver, butter, cream and eggs to convalescing patients.

Pottenger's cats

Pottenger used donated laboratory cats to test the potency of the adrenal extract hormones he was making. The adrenal glands of these cats were removed for the experiments and Pottenger noted that most of the cats died during or followng the operation. He was feeding the cats a supposedly nutritive diet consisting of raw milk, cod liver oil and cooked meat scraps of liver, tripe, sweetbread, brains, heart and muscle.

When the number of donated cats exceeded the supply of food available, Pottenger began ordering raw meat scraps from a local meat packing plant, including organs, meat, and bone; and fed a separate group of cats from this supply. Within months this separate group appeared in better health than the cooked meat group. Their kittens were more energetic and, most interestingly, their post-operative death rate was lower.

At a certain point, he decided to begin a controlled scientific study.

Pottenger conducted studies involving approximately 900 cats over a period of ten years, with three generations of cats being studied. In one study, dubbed the "Milk Study," he reviewed the effects of the following five diets on cats:

*Diet A: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 raw milk.
*Diet B: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 pasteurized milk.
*Diet C: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 evaporated milk.
*Diet D: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 sweetened condensed milk.
*Diet E: raw metabolized vitamin D milk only.

Effects on cats

*Pottenger concluded that diet A, consisting exclusively of raw milk and raw meat was the only adequate intake which insured the maintenance of optimal health for the cats.
*The cats eating the other four diets had multiple problems:Dubious|date=September 2008
**By the end of the first generation the cats started to develop degenerative diseases and became quite lazy.
**By the end of the second generation, the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and started losing their coordination.
**By the end of the third generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span. Many of the third generation cats couldn't even produce offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in normal cats to over 90 percent in the third generation of deficient cats. Kittens of the third generation did not survive six months. Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive.
**The cats suffered from most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.

Applicability to humans?

Although this particular Pottenger cat study has been cited by advocates of raw milk as evidence that it is likely healthier for humans than pasteurized milk, the scientific community does not affirm that inference.Fact|date=September 2008

*Cats are not used as surrogate test subjects for studies relating to humans due to significantly different metabolic mechanisms. Cats are true carnivores needing only meat in their diets, whereas humans are omnivores.

Meat study

In another study, one group of cats was fed a diet of two-thirds raw meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil while the second group was fed a diet of two-thirds cooked meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil. Similarly, only the group fed all raw were healthy.

At the time of Pottenger's Study the Amino Acid Taurine had been discovered but had not yet been identified as an essential amino acid for Cats. Today many cats thrive on a cooked meat diet where Taurine has been added after cooking. The deficient diets lacked sufficient taurine to allow the cat's to properly form protein structures and resulted in the health effects observed. Pottenger himself concluded that there was likely an "as yet unknown" protein factor that may have been heat sensitive. This aspect shows adequately the importance of essential amino acids for pure carnivores like cats but does not contribute anything to the argument in favour of raw milk.

References

Books

*"Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition". ISBN 0-916764-06-0
*"Fundamental Chemistry in Lab". ISBN 0-673-07877-9

External links

* [http://www.price-pottenger.org/ Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation web site.]
* [http://www.realmilk.com/schmid_healthfetish.html Francis M. Pottenger, MD and "The Hazards of a Health Fetish" By Ron Schmid, ND]
* [http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1h.shtml Lesson of the Pottenger's Cats experiment: cats are not humans] (a review of raw foodist claims on Pottenger's Cats experiment)