Thread by @LaurelOld

Every so often I like to peek at what was going on 100 years ago in @jbiolchem. This time did not disappoint... 🧵 #WomenInSTEM

Let me tell you about what delights me in this paper, “Basal Metabolism of Normal Women,” by Katharine Blunt and Marie Dye (1921). jbc.org/article/S0021-…

First of all, the authors were two intrepid researchers from the Department of Home Economics at the University of Chicago. Home Economics!

Senior author Katharine Blunt was a Vassar grad with a PhD in organic chemistry and chem-professing experience under her belt. She later became chair of the Home Ec department, and subsequently president of a women’s college. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine…

Second author Marie Dye was a graduate student earning her PhD with Blunt, who would later become the first female full professor at Michigan State University. (miwf.org/timeline/marie…)

This pair published several times in JBC, and I have a hunch that they might have been in a physiology or biochem department if it hadn’t been for the sexism of the period.

Though maybe I’m mistaken! Home economics at the time was very concerned with nutrition research along the lines of “how to feed a family affordably, prior to modern food supply systems, without nutrient deficiencies.” Which is a pretty darn important mission, then and now.

Anyway, they didn’t let the "home ec = sewing classes" bias stop them from studying what interested them. And that’s the second thing that delights me about this paper.

As we know, women’s physiology is STILL understudied today - cf: “sex as biological variable,” vaccine/menstruation physiology debates, what the hell preeclampsia even is.

So I find it very commendable that a whole century ago, these scientists were saying, “Gosh, menstruation is a pretty significant physiological event; wonder what it does to overall metabolism?”

They measured oxygen consumption for duplicate 10-minute time periods after a rest/acclimation, in a daily timecourse for numerous subjects. Boy do I wish that they’d had modern statistical methods to look at the patterns they found.

It being 1921, however, they concluded that “the daily metabolism immediately before and during menstruation gives a confused sense of irregularity rather than of periodicity.”

(You can look at all of their raw data, if you care to, because they were excellent scientists and put it all in the paper, which is OA like all JBC papers are now. /plug).

Anyway, they concluded that menstruation didn’t change basal metabolism, though they did see some high-metabolism days just before the onset of menstruation.

I’m not sure that’s an accurate conclusion; subsequent studies in 1982 (Solomon et al, Am J Clin Nut, $) and 1996 (Curtis et al., Am J Hum Biol, $) that followed subjects for a longer time (three months in one case!) did observe BMR fluctuations with menstrual cycle.

So the noisy data and the short timecourses may have obscured their subjects' BMR changes. BUT STILL. What a nifty little piece of science history.

#PeriodScience

I'm especially tickled to imagine the 17 other students and faculty they recruited, hanging out in the home ec department FOR SCIENCE.
/end