An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

PRICE, Weston Andrew Valleau

1 entries
  • 10688

Nutrition and physical degeneration: A comparison of primitive and modern diets and their effects.

New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1939.

"The 1939 foreword to the book, written by physical anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton, lauded Price's work for confirming previous research that dental caries were less prevalent in "savages" and attempting to establish the etiology for this difference. In 1940, a review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called the book "a masterpiece of research", comparing Price's impact on nutrition to that of Ivan Pavlov in digestion. In 1950, a review in the journal The Laryngoscope said that "Dr. Price might well be called "The Charles Darwin of Nutrition" while describing Price's documentation of his global travel and research in a book.[24] Other reviews were less sympathetic, with the Scientific Monthly noting some of his conclusions went "much farther than the observations warrant," criticizing Price's controversial conclusions about morality as "not justified by the evidence presented", and downplaying the significance of his dietary findings.[23] Likewise, a review in the Journal of the American Medical Association disagreed with the significance of this nutritional research, noting Price was "observant but not wholly unbiased", and that his approach was "evangelistic rather than scientific."[25]

"A 1981 editorial by William T. Jarvis published in Nutrition Today was more critical, identifying Price's work as a classic example of the "myth of the healthy savage," which holds that individuals who live in more technologically primitive conditions lead healthier lives than those who live in more modern societies. The review noted that Price's work was limited by a lack of quantitative analysis of the nutrition of the diets studied, and said he overlooked alternative explanations for his observations, such as malnutrition in primitive societies and overindulgence in the Western diet, rather than the diet itself, as a cause for poorer health. The review makes the assertion that Price had a preconceived positive notion about the health of primitive people, which led to data of questionable value and conclusions that ignored important problems known to afflict their societies, such as periodontal disease.[26] "(Wikipedia article on Weston Price, accessed 08-2018).

The text of the 1939 edition may be available from journeytoforever.org at this link.



Subjects: ANTHROPOLOGY › Cultural Anthropology, DENTISTRY, NUTRITION / DIET, Popularization of Medicine