Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-02-18
CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER II
Food minerals not only themselves
engage in the construction processes
going on constantly within the body,
but they also exercise a controlling
influence over the destructive forces
that threaten the body from with
out.
Those little soldiers of life called
corpuscles which we examined a short
time ago are never out of the pres
ence of iron. Containing no iron them
selves, they nevertheless swim about
in fluid which does contain iron. If
that iron were not present the little
soldiers would die.
Iron combines with oxygen in the
presence of water, no matter where it
is found. The blade of a pocketknife,
the hinge of a barn door, the barrel
of rifle, the spring of a farm wa
gon, becomes rusty" Rust is simply
a combination of iron and oxygen. The
chemist calls it ferrous oxide"
The wonderful affinity of oxygen
for iron is an expression of the law
under whose operation oxygen finds
it's way into the body. Without the
iron in the red coloring matter of the
blood the body could not appropriate
the oxygen from the surrounding air
and in a few minutes it would perish.
We need only to choke a human
creature for two minutes to be guilty
of murder. To choke means to shut
off oxygen. The carburetor of an
automobile engine is equipped with a
"choker." To stall the engine it is
only necessary to resort to this chok-
er, which, by cutting off the oxygen,
makes combustion in the cylinders i'm
possible.
In exactly the same way combus-
tion, supported by oxygen, is neces-
sary to the fires of life. In exactly
| the same way combustion is pre-
vented.
II the blood contains only half the
iron necessary to bring into the body
all the oxygen required the body
though it's diminished oxygen supply
will grow pale and sicken. Iron is in
dispensable. 1t is part of the law.
The waste matter which is accu-
mulating in the human tissues dur
ing every second of existence would
destroy life in twenty-four hours II
it were not rendered harmless and
carried off. When these waste pro-
ducts are only partially removed the
result is autointoxication, self-poison'
ing.
The iron in the blood, uniting in
the lungs with the oxygen OF the air
carries it's life-supporting freight tC
the tissues, where it oXidizes or burns
I uD the waste SuDSldHCSS 81 uoi6Si ous
to life.
II the iron is not present in suffi-
cient quantity to keep up with the de.
mand of the body the oxygen that
ought to be inside performing its work
remains outside ready and willing, but
unable to enter.
When fire, through the influence OF
oxygen, attacks piece of wood il
produces smoke and ashes. Just as
the smoke of the fire has to be car
ried off through the chimney and the
ashes raked through the bars of the
CRATE, so do the oxygen-burned waste
products of the body have, to be eli
minated
1t is this oxidizing process going or
in the human tissues which produces
the carbonic gas which we have seer
is taken up by the sodium in the
blood and discharged through the
lungs as carbon dloXide.
The sodium, having work of its
own to perform, has to help the oXy-
gen and the oxygen in turn has TO be
helped by the iron. Thus we obtain
Aa vague idea of how these food min