Burkitt, Denis

To Drs. Denis Burkitt and Hugh Trowell, who have given me a unique perception of the correlation of health and disease with food, and to Drs. John Farquhar and David Jenkins, who always inspire me with their work on the relation of diet to chronic diseases. 

Heinerman showcases the talents of the famous Dr. Denis Parsons Bnrkitt of London. Serving in Afriea, he diseovered a viral tumor in Afriean children, which came to be known as Burkitt s lymphoma. He also imcovered the fact that dietary fiber aets against colon cancer and other intestinal diseases. 

In substantiation, Dr. Yurkovsky cites the well-known law of pharmacology, called the Arndt-Schultz law, that low doses excite physiological activity, moderate doses favor it, but high doses retard or arrest it. An analogy is to Le Chatelier s principle, that chemical systems at equilibrium tend to resist imposed external effects. Further, there are the observations of Dr. Denis Parsons Burkitt, discoverer of Burkitt s lymphoma, about chemotherapy dosage levels. His viewpoint was that smaller is better (possibly serving to stimulate the immune system). It is a protocol favored in Britain but not in the United States. 

Denis Burkitt and Neil Painter then began what they might not— but I certainly do—regard as modern substantiation for the old concept of health foods, in their article Diverticular Disease of the Colon—a deficiency disease of Western Civilisation. ... 

I was talking the other day to a public school headmaster who told me that Denis Burkitt had convinced him and his family to use wholemeal bread at home. He had no answer when 1 asked him why he hadn t introduced this innovation to the boys at his school as well as to his family. At least there could be a choice. 

Dietary Fiber was an unknown phrase to all but a handful of individuals in the early years of the 1970s when a wide range of potential therapeutic applications were suggested by Hugh Trowell, Denis Burkitt, and Alexander Walker. Twenty-five years later there can hardly be an ordinary mortal who has not heard the term, though he may not be able to define it. In some cases the claims remain largely unsubstantiated but in three areas, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, and bowel function, there is sufficient evidence to allow dietary advice to be given. 

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