Muriel Bell

Muriel Emma Bell (4 January 1898 – 2 May 1974) was a New Zealand nutritionist and medical researcher. Bell campaigned for the value of vitamin C and D supplements for children which has subsequently benefited the health of all New Zealanders. Dr Bell also worked tirelessly on reducing the rate of goitre in New Zealand by introducing iodised salt.

Early life Bell was born in Murchison, New Zealand on 4 January 1898, the daughter of Thomas, a farmer, and Eliza . Bell attended the local school in Murchison. On the 3rd of May 1907, her mother was killed, and her father injured, in a tramcar accident in Wellington and her father consequently had to give up farming. He moved the family to Nelson and later became Mayor of Richmond.

Career In 1922, Bell was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Physiology, and the following year became a Lecturer in Physiology, at Otago Medical School. and took a position lecturing physiology and experimental pharmacology at Otago Medical School. Two years later she became a founding member of the Medical Research Council, and served on its Nutrition Committee as both Research Officer and chairperson. She also served on the Board of Health, where she was the only woman board member. and immediately after the war she was responsible for writing guidelines and scales for food rationing. She also researched the vitamin content of New Zealand-grown vegetables, fruit, fish and cereals, and encouraged New Zealanders to eat more fruit and vegetables.

An early project for Bell was to supervise the joint publication of a textbook on nutrition by the Otago Medical School, the Department of Health and the Medical Research Council. The publication, "Good Nutrition: Principles and Menus" was a huge success and 40,000 copies were produced for nurses, doctors and the general public. While on the council she worked to have milk pasteurized, delivered in covered trucks to protect it from sunlight, and to have unhealthy cows destroyed. Two years later she spent a sabbatical at Harvard University where she researched the effects of fluoridated water. As a result of her research, she returned to New Zealand to campaign for fluoridation. 1959 – a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine 1968 – awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Otago

Legacy In 2017, she was selected as one of the Royal Society of New Zealand's "150 women in 150 words". Bell's personal papers, stored at the Hocken Collections of the University of Otago, were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand Ngā Mahara o te Ao register in 2019.