Hans Adolf Krebs took over the management of the volunteers in 1943 when Mellanby left to work for the army.
[2] The establishment was founded on the personal initiative of Mellanby and at first he was free to carry out whatever investigations he chose.
Mellanby's status as a scientist meant that he was in a reserved occupation and forbidden from joining the armed forces.
Mellanby had an interest in head lice infestation and scabies was thus a natural area of research for him.
Walter Bartley acted as technician and assistant to Mellanby and later became a professor at Sheffield University, but he also served as a volunteer experiment subject.
[7] Some volunteers had regular jobs outside the programme, the rest were expected to carry out domestic tasks in the house.
[8] Mellanby chose to use conscientious objectors because they were the only group of healthy young people who were not likely to be taken away from him for some military purpose in the middle of an experiment.
However, this experiment lasted considerably longer than expected, from July 1942 to October 1944, and the only specific effect that developed in those deprived of vitamin A was some loss of night vision after about eight months.
One technique that was found to be effective was to require the volunteer to wear the used, unwashed underwear of a scabies victim.
He set up a military hospital for this purpose and sent army medical officers to the institute for training.
Large amounts of shipping were being sunk in the Battle of the Atlantic by German forces and many surviving sailors spent long periods in lifeboats before being rescued.
The volunteers in this study were deprived of fluids for three and a half days and only allowed to eat the kind of dried food stored as emergency supplies in lifeboats such as sea biscuits and chocolate.
[17] However, the cost in ships and lives was of greater importance during the war than dietary considerations, so long as the effects were not immediately debilitating.
The results of the wheat extraction research made a large difference to Britain's war effort.
It has been calculated that raising the extraction rate from 75% to 85% saved the equivalent of forty Liberty ships.