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

OPINIONS OF LEARNED CHEMISTS.

39

bread-making, is very poisonous - the combinations
of phosphorous acid, which he (Dr. Churchill) recommends as medicine, being much milder, are perfectly
innocent, if carefully used; but he has the candor to
quote from Dr. Buckheim, a celebrated chemist, the
following opinion from four other celebrated German
chemists, in regard to his own milder form of phosphorus:"Woehler and Frenich, basing their opinion as
much upon their own experiments as upon those of
Weigel and Krug, have concluded that phosphorous
acid has a poisonous effect analogous to arsenic,...
and acts upon the economy exactly like phosphoric
acid.... The same also holds good with the salts
(phosphatic salts) of soda."
And this opinion completely covers the ground of
the professor's phosphatic bread. On page 21, Professor Horsford says, "The phosphoric acid is prepared from the only practicable source of phosphorus
-the bones of beef and mutton. They are boiled,
then calcined." This burning of course disorganizes
the bones, and the phosphorus is in the same condition
as that used for matches, which we know to be very
poisonous.
Now, if we apply to this case the law to which
I have referred, that elements once disorganized can
never be restored to their normal condition till they
have been returned to the soil and reorganized in
some plant, and, unless thus organized, can never be
made to enter into the composition of any organ of the