Dr. Tom Douglas Spies (September 21, 1902 in Ravenna, Texas – February 28, 1960 in New York City) was a distinguished American physician and medical educator.
[2] In 1945, he and six social workers, including Martha Hutchinson, studied the effects of daily supplementation of milk on the growth and development of malnourished children.
Spies was appointed to the Food and Nutrition Board of National Research Council in 1943, and was a consultant on tropical medicine at Washington's Army Medical School, 1945.
In the late 1940s, Spies experimented with the use of folic acid and other vitamins in the treatment of tropical sprue, which was a deadly disease at that time; he conducted his research in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
According to the American Medical Association, Through his researches, pellagra in the southern United States and tropical sprue in Cuba and Puerto Rico have been virtually eliminated.