CHAPTER I
THE MEDICINE FROM METALS
In our treatment of the human body we have to remember that in composition it is not an inanimate object capable of sustaining the kind of treatment accorded to a sack of sand, but a delicate organism possessed of the capacity of feeling, consciously and unconsciously, and must be handled accordingly. The cell life of the body is selective in the finest sense, the cells rejecting any substance unfit for their use, and consequently it is as reasonable to expect to run a modern aeroplane engine on inferior fuel as to ingest into the human body for its maintenance a drug of a gross nature, or a food devoid of its natural vital principle.
We all have constant proof of the fact that at a certain stage in his life man's body apparently begins to deteriorate, the reason given for this deterioration being the slowing down of the cell activity with the result that the body's wasting process proceeds more rapidly than does the repairing process. This explanation is correct, for as man gets older, the vital energy does not flow through to the cells of his body so efficiently as in his youth, and the cells of the body, when unable to obtain their requisite elements, become sluggish in their action and ultimately diseased.