HEALTH NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 164, 13 July 1929, Page 9 (Supplement)

HEALTH NOTES.

THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL.

THEIR SIMILARITIES.

NATURE'S LABORATORIES,

(By R. J. TERRY.)

(No. I.)

I have been asked to write on health subjects, using simple language and endeavouring to place facts before readers in such a way that they are easily grasped. It is often quoted that we came from dust and to dust we shall return. Many people simply make this statement without grasping its real meaning or truth. It is a fact that from soil our bodies are built up, and it may be said that to the soil our bodies return. To keep to simple language a portion of fertile soil, a bundle of healthy plants and a mixture of all parts of the human body analysed would give one the same results, that is, you would find that the soil contained sixteen main substances and these substances would be found in animals, plants or human beings. It might be said if that is so then why cannot we extract these substances from the soil, instead of expending a vast amount of labour in farming and growing foods? This has been the ambition of chemists for many years, but this ambition will never be realised, because the body cannot assimilate inorganic compounds. The substances found in the soil must first pass through Nature's laboratory, the plant, to render them assimilable for men or animals.

If we take briefly the composition of a plant and afterwards the composition of the human body it may help to impress these facts upon my readers. In the past when soils, plant life and allied agricultural substances were my study, I was taught, and afterwards knew it to be a fact, that we would not go far wrong if we were to assume that all plants are built up of the same elements combined in different proportions. These elements are cargon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosporus, silicon, chlorine, and about half a dozen metals or metal salts in combination. Now, I want to impress this upon you, it is the relative proportions of these elements and their compounds to which the great difference in the chemical composition of various plants are due. I again say, that there is no difference except in quantities and combinations between the lowliest weed and the lordly giant of the forest. Glass In the Body. Different combinations of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen give us the large class of bodies known as carbohydrates, including such dissimilar substances, or dissimilar to the layman, as starch, sugar, the woody structure, cellulose, gums, etc. Hydrogen and oxygen combined, as most of you know, gives us

water, but nitrogen united with these two elements, with the addition of a little sulphur form the nitrogenous constituents of the plant, such aa the gluten in wheat which is quite different in its character from starches. You may all find gluten by taking some ordinary white flour, putting it in a piece of coarse muslin and washing it in clean water till evenually the water remains clear. Tho substance left in the muslin will be sticky, and is gluten. Now just pause and think what a wonderful chemist is Nature working through the laboratory of a plant. Combining the carbohydrates or starches she makes a totally different substance, without in any way affecting the starches. You all know that if you were to consume some pieces of glass, no matter how finely they were ground, you would die, in fact the more finely they were ground the more certain death would be, yet everyone's body contains glass, although it does not go under that name, and it is taken into the body after passing through a plant. We will suppose for illustration, that an oat has fallen on suitable soil. It sends out little rootlets, and on these little rootlets, minute hair-like growths which gather food from the surrounding soil, attack a small piece of Bilica and dissolve and absorb it (I might mention that silica in combination with a little caustic soda when melted makes ordinary glass). The plant, without heat or appliances, can completely dissolve silica. By and by the oat grows, until it has quite a tall stem and carries a heavy head of seed. Now, there can be rain for a week, and providing there is not sufficient wind to break the plant, it will not become pappy or limp, and this because of the small quantity of glass distributed throughout its length. As the oat seeds or kernels develop a large portion of this glass is by them, and in this form we can assimilate' it, with the result that the formation of our bone is considerably improved and there is a general firming of the muscles or tissues. Comparatively little is known of the metals in plants, their disposition and the changes they undergo, but I want to point out that they do undergo decided changes in the plant, changes which cannot always be followed by the chemist. For instance, you may burn a good stout oat straw grown on soil containing silica and obtain a tiny bead of glass, but it is not in that form in the plant. You may burn a plant, or a portion of the human body, and obtain oxide of • iron, but that is not the form in which iron is in the plant or in the human body. The ordinary analytical chemist can only detect the metals in the ash in combination with oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur and chlorine. The ash is that part which remains after the plant is burnt. The Importance of Water. Not only do the quantities of the different elements vary in different plants, but in the same plant some elements are present in quantities out of all proportion to the others. Over onehalf of the bulk of most growing plants consists of water. In watery fruit, such as the melon or cucumber, this percentage of water is as high as 90 to 06 per cent. Of the remaining portion

of the plant the compounds of the metals rarely exceed 2 per cent, and are more often about 1 per cent. This you may readily prove by burning a weighed quantity of any green crop until a white ash or nearly so is left; the ash from every pound of such crop will not weigh more than a hundred grains. It will be found that the human body contains about as much water as the average plant, and some few of us who have water-logged tissues are getting towards the cucumber stage. It will also be found that the mineral salts are not more than about 2 per cent, and it has been found that they cannot be injected into the tissue of living animals in excess of about this quantity. The point of importance for us to keep in mind is that each of these plant constituents is as necessary for the well being, yes, even for the existence, of the plant as any other, whether that constituent be present in large or small quantity. The substances found in the ash, though present in minute proportions, are as indispensable to the well being of the plant as the elements found in large quantities. Not only that, but if a single one of the ash constituents is insufficiently supplied—if the potash be deficient or the iron—the plant likewise suffers, although ( the amount of such element does not in many cases amount to more than a fraction of 1 per cent. So it is with the human being; if we lack in these substances we lack health, and it may be that because the amounts of these substances are so minute that there is not sufficient attention given to them. However I will deal with the constituents of the human body later on. The volatile portions of the plant, that is the water, carbohydrates, nitrogenous matter, is for the most part abundantly supplied to it by air and rain (with the exception of nitrogen in some plants), that is to say, about 98 per cent of the food of the entire plant is derived from air and water. From the soil it extracts the remaining 2 per cent, consisting of iron, lime, magnesia, potash, soda and manganese, combined with sulphuric, hydrocloric and phosphoric acids, together with the nitrogen as already stated. Ihese substances it is the function of the soil to supply, and where the soil by reason of its nature or from having been exhausted is unable to meet the demands, either the plant will not develop, or it is sick unless we assist by manures in supplying the deficiency. I have stated that the composition of the human body is the same as fertile soil, healthy plants, etc. Your body is composed of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, clorine, calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, me°-an-ese, iron, silicon and fluorine. In°my next contribution I will deal with these substances in detail.