BUILDING BRICKS OF LIFE

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3481, 19 June 1934, Page 4

BUILDING BRICKS OF LIFE

THE MINERAL BASES

Humanity is curiously interested in the details of human structure, and reads with avidity the secret constitution of the body frame. Not so long ago there was a fashion in "home doctors" and other publications that chastened the haughty farmer and the class conscious agitator by telling them that their bodily tenement' was no more than two or three buckets of water, a 1 pound or two of butter and soap and glycerine, a packet of candles, a stick of caustic soda, an inch or two of sulphur, two scoops of superphosphate, and one tenpenny nail! Though this was known as a general thing, at which the ignorant wondered, and the intellectual were supercilious, medical men were brought up on the teaching that small supplies of a large number of substances were found in the body, but that they were unimportant. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, chlorine, iodine and iron were among them, but all were equally disregarded. By and by it was found that some were entirely essential —iodine, for example (its absence caused some forms of goitre), iron in anaemia, and so forth. It now appears, as the result of the labours of science, that Nature has apparently been trying for. thousands of years, and through millions of human bodies, a vast series of experiments as to the ideal metal for each particular body function, and so marked is the result that one enthusiast calls this fact the "mineral basis of life."

THE PENNIES OF THE BODY

"BANK."

Some scientific workers abroad recently demonstrated that copper, though present only in traces —the pence of daily life—nevertheless, has a very definite purpose and function, and cannot be replaced by any other metal. It is found mainly in the liver but its universal presence, in both animals' and plants, indicates that it is an element necessary to life. In plants it occurs in all parts, but is found in greater concentrations in the leaves and fruits than in the roots, and it is specially concentrated in the fruits. This is true of most

of the heavy metals besides copper that occur in plants; they pass up the stem, from the roots with, growth, and are finally concentrated in the fruit —which, of course, we eat. In man the chief function of coppea* is in making haemoglobin, which is the material that reddens the blood and carries the oxygen on which we "wtork." All animals that li\e on milk during infancy are born with a strong reserve of copper and iron laid down in the liver, until they reach the age and stage when they take in a more varied diet and a new store of these metals with it. Moreover, growth itself seems to be affected by its presence. The gradual demonstration of the real nature of the vitamins has curious points of contact with this study of the minute traces of metals that occur. Vitamin B was once a simple substance: now is has become a most varied materia] called the "vitamin B complex," with 81, 82, etc., etc., contained. For a long time I have thought that it might have relations Avith an elemental metallic base, and this recent work seems to demonstrate that copper and iron have a very definite physiological relation to this "complex."

Manganese, too, is widely spread through, the animal and plant kingdoms, and is essential also to life. It has been found in Australia by Bishop that it is much more abundant in roots and seeds and leaves than in the passive parts of plants, such as the stems. Manganese seems in some way essential to the l'eproductive organs, and an absence of sufficient manganese in the diet produces an atrophy of the reproductive glands in male animals, and a failure to be able to suckle the young in the female. "Where there is not a proper calcium balance, manganese has the effect of producing kidney changes, and kidney disease is exceedingly common at early ages, precisely where calcium deficiency seems also most frequent.

"SMALL CHANGE." Silver is curiously distributed. Every species of fungus examined showed it, including truffles and mushrooms; it stimulates the growth of watercress, and the nicotine secreting hairs of the tobacco plant; and it is widely spread in the human body, the thyroid gland and the tonsil being especially its resorts. Lead occurs to a very considerable extent, and is found also in shellfish, etc., probably because it is constantly present in sea water. Tin occurs in the brain, spleen, and thyroid, but to a very marked and surprisng degree in the tongue. (Considering how often a glib tongue leads to fortune, we have here perhaps a new confirmation of good luck as belonging to "tinny" people!) Zinc is found universally in tissues, and is another of the elements that must be regarded as essential to life. It seems that it is present in the blood (mainly in the cells); in human milk /highest percentage at the birth of the child and for the next 15 days); and in the reproductive organs, the thyroid and the liver.

HOUSES BUILT ON .ROCK

Space and interest both, forbid a discussion of the chlorides, boron, silicon, sodiujm, potassium, lithium, dubidium, calcium, barium, strontium, beryllium, cobalt, nickel, aluminium, arsenic, cadmium, vanadium, and so forth or of the difficult chemical processes that go on in the interaction of some of these things with or against each other. Suffice it to say that the further we go into the subject the more we see how intimate and how intricate are the chemical processes that permit us to live and cause us to die. Germs are the foes that attack us from outside in their everlasting armies; from most of them we sit secure within the fortress walls of our body resistances. But it is of and upon the rock of our mineral constitution and reserve that the fortress itself is built, and the foe gets a footing wherever there is a flaw. The famous investigation of Helen Mackay showed that a large number of London children were deficient in iron, and Davidson found the same thing for the children of Aberdeen. There is no doubt that the children of the poor in Europe (especially in cities) are underfed, not so much in quantity as in quality —not so much in actual lack of food as in poverty of vitamins and mineral k ase s—if these are not different kinds of the same thing.

We have often compared the body to a great city full of separate inhabitants (the cells), but it appears that it is a city that is no democracy —it is a despotism where great masses of passive tissues are governed and directed by minute amounts of active metals and complexes—the despots of vitality—and every year adds new knowledge to our understanding of the very simple rules and laws under which they 'exercise their control. It is a study worth watching, for it is the bas.is of life itself.