Francis M. Pottenger, Jr.

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

He completed his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital in 1930 and 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 bought some of the cottages from the Monrovia sanatorium and founded the Francis M Pottenger, Jr. Hospital. Until closing in 1960, the 42-bed hospital specialized in treating non-tubercular diseases of the lung, especially asthma.

One particular question that Pottenger addressed in his study had to do with the nutritive value of heat-labile 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 adrenal cortex as supplements to treat allergic states and exhaustion. 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 hospital, he served liberal amounts of liver, butter, cream and eggs to convalescing patients.

Pottenger used donated laboratory cats to test the potency of the adrenal extract hormones he was making. The adrenal glands of these cats were removed for the experiments. He was feeding the cats a supposedly nutritive diet consisting 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, Pottenger began ordering raw meat scraps from a 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 lower. At a certain point, he decided to begin a controlled scientific study. Pottenger conducted studies involving approximately 900 cats over a period of ten years, with three generations of cats being studied.

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