1. Major-General Sir Robert McCarrison, CIE, FRCP was a Northern Ireland physician and nutritionist in the Indian Medical Service, who was made a Companion of the Indian Empire in 1923, received a knighthood in July 1933, and was appointed as Honourable Physician to the King in 1935.
Robert McCarrison joined the Indian Medical Service and was posted as Medical Officer to Indian troops guarding the mountainous Northern Frontiers.
Robert McCarrison was promoted to Captain in January 1904, to Major in July 1912, Lieutenant-Colonel in January 1918, Colonel from 1929, and to Major-General in July 1933.
Robert McCarrison retired from the Indian Medical Service on 19 August 1935.
Robert McCarrison carried out the very first experiments to demonstrate the effect of nutrition on the epidemiology of disease.
Robert McCarrison is credited with being the first to experimentally demonstrate the effect of deficient dietaries upon animal tissues and organs.
Robert McCarrison carried out human experiments aimed at identifying the cause of goitre, and included himself as one of the experimental subjects.
At age 23, Robert McCarrison went to India, where he spent 30 years on nutritional problems.
Robert McCarrison attained the rank of major-general in the Indian Medical Service, and founded the Nutritional Research Laboratories in Coonoor.
In 1918, Robert McCarrison founded the Beri-Beri Enquiry Unit in a single room laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Conoor, India.
In 1926, as head of the Deficiency Diseases Inquiry, Robert McCarrison submitted written and oral evidence on malnutrition to the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India.
The primary objective of Robert McCarrison's submission was to indicate the significance of malnutrition "as a cause of physical inefficiency and ill-health among the masses in India"; the relationship between nutrition and agriculture; and "the necessity for closer co-ordination of nutritional, medical, veterinary and agricultural research" in India.
Robert McCarrison's researches were extensive; they included work on the newly discovered vitamins and on the contrasting disease patterns in the Indian subcontinent.
Robert McCarrison demonstrated how many common diseases increasingly prevalent in industrial societies were caused simply by diets made defective by extensive food processing, often with the use of chemical additives.
Robert McCarrison deplored the universal consumption in Britain and America of refined white flour, instead of halite flour, and the substitution of canned, preserved and artificially sweetened products for fresh natural food.
Robert McCarrison was honoured for his discoveries, but completely ignored by government and the medical profession at a time when medical thought was absorbed in the study of disease rather than on prevention and the promotion of health.
The bulk of Robert McCarrison's work appears to have been published in the British Medical Journal, although he did publish in other journals, such as JAMA and The Lancet, amongst others.
Some of Robert McCarrison's publications listed are from those journals, but links were not located at time of listing.