What are these substances and whence are they obtained? They consist of carbonate and phosphate of lime, principally, with small quantities of the sulphates of lime and magnesia, and a small percentage of other earthy matters. These substances are taken into the system in the food we eat and the water we drink, and it has been estimated that enough lime salts are taken into the system during an average lifetime to form a statue the size of the individual. Of course, the greater part is eliminated by the natural processes, but enough is retained to make ossification a formidable fact. Of the disastrous effects of a preponderance of these mineral salts in the system we have a notable example in the Cretins, a people in the Swiss Alps, who are the victims of premature ossification, their bodies being stunted, rarely attaining a greater height than four feet, and exhibiting all the signs of old age at thirty years; in fact, they seldom live longer than that. In this case the cause is directly traceable to the excess of calcium salts in the drinking water, for although heredity plays an important part in this matter, yet children from other parts, if brought into the region at an early age, soon manifest the symptoms and speedily become Cretins in fact.
Most people are familiar with what is known among housewives as the formation of “fur” in the common tea kettle. This is nothing more nor less than the precipitation of the lime salts by evaporation. Four and five pounds’ weight of this substance has been known to collect in this manner in a single vessel in twelve months. Many people are under the mistaken impression that boiling the water removes the lime. Not so. The precipitation only relates to that proportion of the water that has been evaporated; the remainder (in all probability) possesses a slightly higher percentage of solids than it originally did. So great is the proportion of mineral substance taken into the system in drinking water that it is safe to assert that, if after maturity was reached only distilled or other absolutely pure water was partaken of, life would be prolonged fully ten years. Up to the mature age it would be inadvisable, as the salts are necessary for bone formation. Good filtered rain water, or melted snow, are entirely free from mineral deposits, but if they have stood for any length of time it is advisable to boil them before using, to destroy any organic matter.
But it is not in water alone that these pernicious earthy matters are found. All food substances contain them to a greater or lesser extent. The order in which foods stand in the matter of freedom from earthy impurities is as follows: Fruits, fish, animal flesh (including eggs), vegetables, cereals; so that the advocates of a strictly vegetable diet find themselves confronted by the formidable fact that their mainstay is that class of foods that contain the largest proportion of those substances that hasten ossification. Ample proof is at hand that a strictly vegetable diet results in what is known as atheroma (chalky deposit), an affection of the arteries. Dr. Winckler, an enthusiastic food reformer, who wrote extensively on the subject under the nom de plume of Dr. Alanus, and practised a strict vegetarian diet for some years, was compelled to abandon it, on account of the above disease manifesting itself. Numerous similar cases were observed by Raymond, in a monastery of vegetarian friars, and among the poorer Hindoos, who live almost exclusively on rice, this trouble is of frequent occurrence.
The reason of this is obvious. Vegetable food is richer in mineral salts than animal food, and consequently, more are introduced into the blood. There are exceptions, for instance, fruits, which are an ideal food, for several excellent reasons. To commence with, they contain less earthy matter than any other known organic substance; they contain upward of 70 per cent, of the purest kind of distilled water—distilled in Nature’s laboratory; and distilled water is an admirable solvent, and is ready for immediate absorption into the blood, and, lastly, the starch of the fruit has, by the sun’s action, been converted into glucose, and is practically ready for assimilation. In point of nutritive value, fruits may be classed in order as follows: Dates, figs, bananas, prunes, apples, grapes.
Bread has long been known as the “staff of life,” and although it forms the main dietary staple for large numbers of people, that does not in any way prove its eligibility as an article of food. We have seen that cereals contain a very large proportion of inorganic matter (the mineral salts), and wheat is as richly endowed in this respect as any of its fellows. Wheat is rich in heat producing qualities, which is due to the quantity of starch it contains. Now, this starch must be converted into glucose before the system can appropriate it, and as exhaustive experiments have shown that not more than four per cent. of the starch is converted by the ptyalin in the saliva, the principal work of dealing with the starch devolves upon the duodenum, or second stomach, the fluids of the main stomach having no action upon it.
Now, this extra and unnecessary work falling upon the duodenum entails a delay in the process of digestion, and a corresponding delay in assimilation, so a habit of intestinal inactivity is induced, and the seeds of constipation are sown, because the starchy foods, being slow in giving up their nutritive elements, the refuse is proportionately backward in being eliminated. Fruits, on the contrary, although equally rich in heat producing qualities, yet on account of the previous natural transmutation of starch into glucose, are in a condition for immediate appropriation by the system, and consequently absorption of nutrition and elimination of waste are equally prompt. This partially explains the aperient action of fruits, although there is a chemical reason also. For the reasons above stated, lightly baked bread should never be eaten; it should be toasted thoroughly brown first, by which the first step in the conversion of the starch is accomplished.