108 MEALS MEDICINAL, 
whatever form it is administered medicinally, can be recovered 
from the excretions, absolutely undiminished in quantity, so that 
evidently no particle thereof is assimilated into the system. 
Nevertheless, the machinery of red Blood-making is undoubtedly 
started afresh by giving iron, whether in food, or in physic (much 
more problematically). In 1902 Professor Bunge read an 
important paper on “Tron in Medicine” before the German 
Medical Congress. He advocated an increased attention to 
foods containing iron, as a substitute for its administration in 
drug-form. “Spinach,” said he, “is richer in iron than yolk 
of egg, and yolk of egg than beef; milk is almost devoid of iron ; 
and, as if to provide against this defect, the Blood of the infant 
mammal is more plentifully endowed with the essential ingre- 
dients than that of adults, thus showing that nature is always 
self-provident.” Garden spinach (one of the ‘ Goosefoot ” 
order), than which no better blood-purifier grows amongst 
vegetables, contains iron as one of its most abundant salts ; 
hence it is a valuable food for bloodless persons ; moreover, in 
both salinity, and digestibility it leads the kitchen greens, its 
amount of salts being 2 per cent, whereby it helps to furnish 
red colouring matter (hemoglobin) for the blood. In the fruit 
world even the apple does not afford so much iron as this vege- 
table, neither does the strawberry. Spinach insists on having a 
rich soil in which to grow, out of which it extracts a large 
proportion of saline matters. Its full green juice abounds in 
chlorophyll, insomuch that the spinach may be cooked entirely 
in its own fluids, and in the steam which will arise from them. 
This brilliant green principle of colour, elaborated from the 
yellow and blue rays of the sunlight, is peculiarly salubrious. 
Evelyn (Acetaria) has said, « Spinach being boil’d to a pulp, 
and without other water than its own moisture, is a most 
excellent condiment for almost all sorts of boil’d flesh, and may 
accompany a sick man’s diet. ’Tis laxative and emollient, and 
therefore profitable for the aged.” 
Savoy, a nutritious, and wholesome companion of spinach, 
contains the greatest amount of vegetable oil of all this class of 
kitchen plants ; and spinach runs the luxuriant Savoy very close 
in its complement of bland oil-salts, which render the juices 
nourishing. Quite half a pint of spinach-oil might be expressed 
from a hundred pounds of the vegetable, and sometimes more 
bes : than this from the same quantity of Savoy. 
