Amador ledger., 1905-11-03
WONDERFULFACTORY
COMPLICATED PROCESSES CAR
RIED ON IN MANS BODY.
Fourteen Elements Constantly occu-
pied in the Intricate Work
of the Physical Sys-
fem

You will probably be surprised, said
a well-known professor of chemistry,
when 1 tell you that the most beauti-
full woman or the most intellectual
man that ever lived is really nothing
more than animated white of egg; and
yet it is perfectly true that, if you
only knew how to do it, you could take
a few hundreds of eggs-you would
want, well, over 1000, by the way
and manufacture a second Shakespeare
or Helen of Troy from them.
Unfortunately-or fortunately, rath-
er-although the materials of which
man is composed are common enough,
the blending of them to form living
being is far beyond any human pow
ers. But let us just run through the
constituents we are made of and see
of what very ordinary materials the
best and cleverest of us are composed.
If we take 1SS-pound man and de-
prive him of gas and carbon there will
be only five pounds of him left; while
even the least oratorical man that ever
lived is fve-sixths gas and nothing
else. Well may it be said: eve are
such stuff as dreams are made Of" for
truly we are just as insubstantial.
In our subject we shall find no less
than 11S pounds of oxygen; he con-
tains as much, in fact, of this vital
gas" as would fill room 13 feet long,
ten feet wide and a shade over ten feet
high. If we proceed next to deprive
him of his hydrogen he will only lose
a little over Is pounds of his weight
by the process, but the gas we procure
will fill a room more than twice the
size of our oxygen reservoir; for it
will be Is feet square and as nearly
as possible II feet high, and will have
such buoyancy that it could carry our
patient up to the clouds.
Another essential gas is nitrogen, of
which our man has GA cubic feet
slowed away in his body sufficient to
fill nice little box four feet long, wide
and high. We have now deprived our
man of three of his IA constituents;
have liberated gases sufficient to fill
room, roughly, 20 feet square and ten
feet high-in which, by the way, you
could pack 500 good-sized men-and
have reduced his weight by 199 pounds.
There is not much left of him to ac-
count for, you see, now that the three
gases are eliminated-only 29 pounds,
in. fact, the weight of an infant-and
of this single other constituent takes
the lions share of "a pounds. This
constituent is carbon, that curious ele-
ment which takes such widely diverse
forms as common coal and the Kohl
moor, and is not to be despised in the
lead pencil. Just as coal keeps our
houses warm and gives motive power
to the steam engine, so it supplies
energy and fuel to the human body.
We have now only five pounds of
our man to account for, and this is
distributed over nine most useful con-
stituents. Two and quarter pounds,
nearly half of it, consist of calcium,
which will be more commonly recog-
nized as lime, and which plays very
important part in the human mechan-
ISM and to this we must add one
pound IA ounces of phosphorus. The
remaining constituents of our man
only weigh one pound one ounce, and
consist of sodium, sulphur, fuorine,
chlorine, magnesium, potassium and
silicon; while in weight they range
from two to three grains to four and
one-half ounces.
Naturally, these IA elements form
combinations in the body in order to
discharge their duties properly. Thus
oxygen and hydrogen combine to form
in our subject 1915 pounds of water,
which serves an infinite number of
most necessary and useful offices. The
chlorine and sodium unite to form
salt, of which we shall find about seven
ounces; and the sodium combines with
carbon and oxygen to form the wash
ing soda" which has been called the
scavenger of the body, and which fills
in its time by playing useful part in
building up our bones.
The body is indeed a most wonder.
full factory, carrying on number of
useful and complicated processes at the
same time. Thus it makes really first
class soap by the hundredweight for
it's own use, and glycerin, too, as by
product; it manufactures sugar from
starch, and it makes gum, pepsin, al
cohol and other products more wonder
full still