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Francis M. Pottenger Jr.

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

He completed his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital in 1930. He 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 founded the Francis M Pottenger, Jr. Hospital at Monrovia. Until closing in 1960, the hospital specialized in treating non-tubercular diseases of the lung, especially asthma.

He served as president of several professional organizations, including the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the American Academy of Applied Nutrition and the American Therapeutic Society.

Work

One particular question that Pottenger addressed in his study has 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 the adrenal cortex for allergic states and the syndrome of depletion. 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 sanitorium in Monrovia, California he served liberal amounts of liver, butter, cream and eggs to convalescing patients. He also gave supplements of adrenal cortex to treat exhaustion.

Pottenger's cats

Pottenger noticed a disproportionately high death rate among cats undergoing adrenalectomy. These laboratory cats were being used to test the potency of a hormone in an adrenal extract he was making. The adrenal glands of these cats were removed for the experiments. Unfortunately most of the cats died during the operation.

Dr. Pottenger was feeding these cats the most nutritive diet he could, according to the experts of his day. The diet consisted 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, Dr. Pottenger began ordering raw meat scraps from the 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 much lower. At a certain point, he decided to begin a controlled scientific study.

The Pottenger cats study lasted for ten years, with three generations of cats being studied. Approximately 900 cats were involved. This study was specifically designed to show the difference between eating raw foods versus cooked and processed foods over a long period of time. The experiment in which one group of cats received only raw milk and raw meat, while other groups received part of the diet as pasteurized milk or cooked meat, can be summarized as follows:

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

Effects on cats

  • The cats eating only raw food were disease free and healthy, generation after generation after generation.
  • The cats eating the cooked and processed foods had all kinds of problems.
    • 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.

His conclusions were that:

  • A diet consisting exclusively of raw milk and raw meat was the only adequate intake which insured the maintenance of optimal health for the cats. Cats on the all-raw diet showed good bone structure with wide palates and plenty of space for the teeth as well as excellent bone density, shiny fur, and lack of parasites and disease. They reproduced with ease and were gentle and easy to handle.
  • Cooking the meat, or substituting heat processed milks for raw, resulted in heterogeneous reproduction and physical degeneration that escalated with each successive generation.
  • The changes in facial structure and beginning of degenerative diseases that Dr. Pottenger observed in cats on deficient diets mirrored the human degeneration that Dr. Price found in tribes and villages that had abandoned traditional foods.

Criticism

The adequate raw diet was 2/3 meat and 1/3 milk, while the inadequate cooked diets were 1/3 meat and 2/3 milk (or ALL milk). Pottenger didn't compare like against like. He switched the ratio, doubling the milk and halving the meat on the cooked diets. This alone may explain the problems on the cooked diets, given the unique nutritional needs of cats. The inclusion of cod liver oil might also be problematic to cooked diets. The results of this study have never been reproduced. There are many other flaws in the study, as well.[1]

Articles

  • Clinical Evidences of the Value of Raw Milk.

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 stuctures and resulted in the health effects observed. Pottenger himself concluded that their was likely an "as yet unknown" protein factor that may have been heat sensitive. The study shows adequately the importance of essential amino acids for pure carnivores like cats but does not contribute anything to the arguement in favour of raw milk.

Books

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