ALKALIES IN FOODS. 33 
When we eat raw vegetables, as in salads, though not converting 
their starch elements into soluble dextrin, especially if vinegar 
is added, yet we obtain all their potash constituents. Fruits, 
taken generally, contain important quantities of potash salts; 
and it is upon these vegetable products that the likely victims 
of gouty acid formations should especially rely ; lemons, and 
grapes contain the same most abundantly. It should not be 
forgotten that nearly all the chemical compounds of potash, 
as they exist in fruits, and vegetables, are acid. But these 
organic acids become disintegrated in the body by their com- 
bustion, and then leave alkaline residual bases. Far different is the 
case with vinegar, and the mineral acids, which are of fixed 
chemical composition, and remain acid throughout. 
Mattieu Williams teaches, in his Chemistry of Cookery (1898), 
that the saline constituents of vegetables (which are usually 
boiled out in the cooking water) are absolutely necessary for 
the maintenance of health ; without them we become the subjects 
of gout, rheumatism, lumbago, gravel, and all the ills which 
human flesh, with a lithic acid disposition, is heir to. The potash 
of these salts existing in the vegetables, as combined with organic 
acids, is separated from these acids by organic combustion, and 
is straightway presented as an alkali to the baneful gouty acid 
of the blood, and tissues, the stony particles of which it converts 
into harmless, soluble lithate of potass, and thus enables them 
to be carried out of the system by the urine, the skin, and other 
channels, “I know not which of the Fathers of the Church 
invented fast days, and soupe maigre, but I can almost believe 
he was a scientific monk, and a profound alchemist, like Basil 
Valentine, who, in his seekings for the “‘ aurum potabile,” the 
elixir of life, had learnt the beneficent action of organic potash 
salts on the blood, and therefore used the authority of the 
Church to enforce their frequent use in vegetable foods among 
the faithful.” The proper compounds to be produced are those 
which correspond to the salts existing in the natural juices of vege- 
tables, and in flesh, viz., compounds of potash with organic acids, 
such as tartaric acid, which forms the potash salt of the grape ; 
such again, as citric acid, with which potash is combined in lemons 
and oranges; likewise malic acid, with which the same alkali 
is combined in apples, and many other fruits ; similarly, too, 
the other natural acids of vegetables in general, as well as the 
lactic acid of milk. As long as the human body remains alive 
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