THE ORGANIC MINERAL ELEMENTS

Organic Cell Salts

Numberless books have been written on food and their con tents in Carbohydrates, Hydrocarbons, Proteins etc. and in prac tically all of them the claim is made that food sufficiently rich in these material and in proper proportion -are good and de sirable diet for man. Much more has been written on the num ber of Calories in the various foods and the necessity of so many Calories per day for each individual whereby health and strength is maintained. With much of this we agree, but we make the positive state ment that a combination of food may contain the necessary carbo hydrates, hydrocarbons and proteins, and may have a sufiicient number of calories, but if the organic mineral elements are miss ing then it is impossible to maintain health, strength and effi ciency, and just as impossible to regain health, however correct the treatment may be. These organic elements forming between five and six per cent of the weight of the body, are found in the bones, teeth, hair and present in the tissues of the body and in solution in the various fluids. While these elements yield no energy, they are necessary to life and equilibrium. In the United States alone more than half a million of chil dren die each year who are below the age of ten years, and more than half of these are victims of a diet deficient in the organic mineral elements, this being principally white bread, denatured rice, barley, oats and corn, and the denatured products of these cereals commonly known as breakfast foods.

 Any denatured food, no matter in what form it is served, is a poison to the system, the giving of it is a crime, because to give poison to another, even in minute quantities, is a crime. All the fluids of the body: the blood, the gastric juice, the pancreatic juice, the saliva, the bile, all contain the organic mineral elements in solution, and unless these are in the food we eat the fluids will be lacking in them and cannot be in a healthy, vital state and weakness, illness, inefficiency, low vitality and general inertness will be the result. We can do without food for days, often weeks and remain in health, but we cannot do without water, or fruits containing water, for a few days. Unless we take water daily, illness and death quickly results because the system is composed of three fourths water and you might just as well expect to be healthy and strong without the full quota of mineral elements as to re main so and be drinking only a third of the amount of liquids required by the body in maintaining health. Water and the organic elements are the basis of life, the other foods we eat sim ply sustain that life. As just stated, three-fourths of the body of man is liquid and this ratio must be maintained by drinking water or by eating fruits and vegetables containing liquids if we want health, strength and vital power.

All schools of medicine recognize the necessity of the min eral elements; proven by the fact that they prescribe iron in anemia and other conditions where lack of vitality is the cause of trouble; phosphates in nerve deficiency; lime in sour stomach etc., but these mineral elements are not assimilated by the sys tem, they act by affinity. The child that is given food deficient in the organic lime element will soon be troubled with sour stomach, usually indi cated by baby’s sore mouth. The physician prescribes lime water; this lime water cannot be assimilated, any effect it may have is not due-to assimilation but to a neutralization of the acid which always is present when there is a deficiency of or ganic lime. At other times it acts through the law of attrac tion; by drawing to itself that which is of like nature and there by causing all the lime contents in the food given the child to be absorbed by the system, instead of only a part as before. It is through this process of attraction and consequent assimilation of the organic lime, the inorganic lime acts as an agent in help ing to re-establish a normal condition. The reason the inorganic lime cannot be absorbed by the system is, it has neither the nuclein or vitamine in combination to give it life, and because of this it is called inorganic. Were it in combination with nuclein and vitamine it would be organic lime and would be assimilated, because of the vitamine and nuclein contents. Likewise in prescribing iron, the physician does so with the idea iron is assimilated. This also is amistaken idea. The system cannot absorb any inorganic matter, for the reason just cited, but the iron may act as atonic, causing the system to make greater effort to digest the food consumed, and through the law of attraction, or affinity, draw out as much of the iron as the food contains and this the system assimilates; the inorganic iron is then eliminated from the system in the form of waste product

The blood is made up of countless corpuscles in which are contained the various mineral elements; as is the blood, so will be the entire system. For instance, if there be sufficient iron in the blood, this organic iron passing through the lungs, is charged, oxidized by the air we breathe, and becomes Magnetic power; because of this we say that a man with plenty of iron in his blood and who breathes naturally, is magnetic and full of life and action. Without this iron in his blood he could not be strong even though he followed a perfect system of breathing. On the contrary, if the blood were full of iron and he failed to breathe property, he would not be magnetic, vital or virile. The blood must absorb these organic mineral elements from the food that man eats, and the chief of those from which it can obtain the cell salts we term vital foods, because they are richest in the building, vitalizing, life-giving elements and con tain the greatest amount of nuclein and vitamine besides. Un _ less some of these are used daily, health and strength are impossi ble. _ Nature in her great wisdom, sets up danger signals. When there is a feeling of weakness and tiredness in the morning, it is not as yet a disease, but it is a warning of a deficiency of iron in the system, and unless this is rectified more serious results will follow, these becoming so pronounced as to end in Anemia or Tuberculosis. If there is a suficiency of iron in the blood, when morning comes one feels like jumping out of bed into a tub of cold water and then out of doors for deep draughts of the life-giving ele ments in the air, for which the iron in the blood is calling.

The theory so often advanced by interested parties, that one food may be denatured and the lack supplied by combination with other elements is totally wrong. For instance, it has been advanced that we may take the denatured wheat product-—white flour—and make up the deficiency therein with other foods rich in the elements that had been removed from the wheat. This is a dangerous theory, and the propaganda which inculcate such teachings is criminal. No food grows, be it what it may, which contains more of any one element than necessary to make it a natural food, and a deficiency in one food cannot be made up by any other, whether by the use of other foods or through the isolation and concentration of such elements. Apparently health may be enjoyed for a time even if one or more of the elements are missing, but a gradual depleting or - tearing down process will take place and this will manifest itself after it has reached a certain stage of the destructive process. The whole of wheat, for instance, contains all of the organic mineral elements, while the white flour of wheat contains prac tically nothing but starch. When wheat is denatured in the making of white flour these organic salts are thrown aside, and this means that when we eat white bread we are actually robbing the system of the necessary mineral elements and at the same time congesting it. Nature made no mistake in the creation of wheat as a Basic food for man. She never expected man to denature that which she had taken such pains to create; there is no logical argument in its favor. All that is in the wheat, bran, middlings and starch, was intended for use and when we rob it of that which Nature placed therein, we do not actually cheat nature; we cheat ourselves and those for whom we are responsible.