Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-04-10
CHAPTER 43


No quantity of medicines or other
substances added to q diet of sugary
and Starchy foods will maintain life,
notwithstanding the fact that sugar
and starch are raced as the principal
high calOrie foods and therefore look
ed upon by mistaken scientists as the
most important of all foods.
1t is not the phosphorus loss in the
milling of wheat, the polishing OF
rice, the pearling of barley, or the
disseminating of corn which explains
the inadequacy of such refined and
denatured food when consumed by
man or animal.
Commenting on the phosphorus con-
tent of unpublished rice as an index
of its fitness for food, Chamberlain
states:
THE determination of any other
element which is chiefly contained in
the pericarp, such as potassium, iron,
calcium, etc, would be an equally
good index of the safety of the rice"
In other words, the food factory
cannot remove any one element from
the cereals prepared by it without also
removing all of the other elements.
They are so intimately bound up with
each other that when one goes they
all go. Therefore it is not phospho-
rus in itself that must be considered,
or iron, or calcium, or any one of the
other food minerals and Vitamines,
but all of them together with such
other bodies of unknown nature which
natural foods contain, in order to de-
termine the fitness of such foods for
human consumption.
To Ver-emphaSize the Importance
of ferments or vitamines or any one
of the mineral fats is to cloud the
whole issue of metabolism in mystery
and darkness. One might as well over
emphasize iodine and ignore the vita
mines as to over-emphasize the vita
mines and ignore iodine.
We have already seen something
of the thyroid gland and have learned
that in health it's iodine content is
much higher than in disease. 1t has
been established, as we have been,
that the thyroid gland of animals fed
on food natural to them contains, at
different seasons of the year, a vary
ing content of iodine.
It has also been esta blished that
the presence of iodine compounds in
the thyroid is largely responsible for
the normal functioning of that gland.
The manner in which iodine so
completely removed from bread, bis
cults, cakes. crackers, cookies, break
fast foods, cornmeal, pearled barley,
rye flour. polished rice, pancakes,
| glucose, table syrup, sugar, candy,
etc, influences the metabolism of
other indispensable bodies is vaguely
limited at through the experiments of
A. ]. Ushenko.
Ushenko found that following
| thyriodentomy (Which means the re-
novel of the thyroid gland) the per-
centage relation of phosphorus to
nitrogen in the urine is first increased
but then again is stately diminished
before death.
"The amido acids and purin bodies
are increased while creatanin is dimin-
ished. The metabolism of the tissues
containing phosphorus and nitrogen
is acutely disturbed, the synthetic
processes being mostly affected"
Here we behold the removal Of an
iodine-secreting gland affecting dis
astrously the interrelations of other
parts of the body and modifying at
once the nature and proportion of ele-
ments secreted and eXcreted by those
other glands. Iodine in itself will not
support life. Its combination with
other elements is essential.
Chamberlain declares that Schau-
mann's assumption that it is a phos-
phorus compound which prevents
polyneurtis is not correct.
"a large number of substances" he
says, have been shown to be of no
value in the prevention of polvneu-
ritis. Among these may be mentioned
potassium chloride, phosphoric acid,
either singly or combined, potassium