The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

A PHYSIOLOGICAL ERROR.

163

iron, with the expectation that it will supply the supposed deficiency of that element, and thus give them
health and strength.
Phosphorus, also, is introduced in superfine flour
bread, with the understanding that it can be made to
take the place of that element, which had been bolted
out; and it is also used to supply the supposed deficiency of that element in consumption and other diseases.
Oxygen, likewise, in the form of gas, is taken to purify
the blood and give vigor to the system.
Carbon and hydrogen are taken in the form of alcohol, with the expectation that they furnish natural heat
to the system.
These ideas seem to have come from Liebig, a very
learned German chemist, who gave to the world much
valuable information on the subject of the chemistry of
food, and whose ideas for the last twenty years have
been very generally adopted, but who ignored the vital
law as controlling chemical laws, and classed alcohol
with sugar and other carbonaceous food, because it contains the same elements, and who offered the analytical
table of alcohol and sugar which I have copied in
another chapter, as proof that alcohol must be nutritive because sugar was nutritive, notwithstanding the
fact that the taste and smell, and perceptible effects of
the two articles, were no more alike than any other two
articles containing different elements. The same argument is still used by eminent chemists, which may
be condensed from an argument already quoted, as
follows: Phosphorus, taken from bones without de