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

40 ORGANIZED PHOSPHORUS IN BONES.

human system, we can understand how he deceives
himself. Being an analytical chemist, and not a physiologist, and retaining the exploded notions of his old
master, Liebig, he does not understand that chemical
laws must always yield to vital laws, as all lower law
must subserve the higher: the laws which control the
elements of the earth must yield to the laws which control the life of man, for whom the earth was made.
If vital law had been understood as well as chemical
law, he certainly would not have answered his own
question, "Is bread made by the new method healthy?"
by referring to articles of food in which the phosphates
exist in an organized state, as in the following quotations from his book, page 23: "The French army
was at one time supplied with soup-cakes, prepared
from bones, with the aid of Papin's digester. The
bones thus liquefied at an elevated temperature and
pressure, supplied phosphates in quantity greatly beyond the normal wants of the soldiers' diet; but
Nature appropriated such portions of the nutriment
offered as she required, and the remainder was rejected." Does this prove that Professor Horsford's
phosphates are wholesome? Then it also proves that
nitric acid is wholesome: for nitrogen is known to be
the basis of beefsteak as well as of nitric acid. It
does, however, illustrate the dependence of chemical
law on vital law.
Phosphatic salts in bones were organized there
through the grass and the grain which the animal
ate, which contain these elements; and the process