William J. Gies 153 



none of these assumptions could be shown to accord with the whole 

 truth in the matter. The amount of ahiminium in the blood at any 

 moment, after the ingestion of aluminized food, is but a fraction of the 

 quantity that may occur in the blood of the individual during a given 

 hour or a given day — larger quantities circulate throughout the body 

 meanwhile, under such conditions. Excretion seems to occur continu- 

 ously in cases of this kind. If the aluminium which is thus carried 

 into the blood were of any value to the organism, it is improbable that 

 the absorption of a minute proportion of aluminium would be promptly 

 followed by the elimination of much of it. The prompt excretion of 

 aluminium under such circumstances implies a decided physiologic 

 repugnance. 



" We found, further, that absorbed aluminium circulated freely, but, 

 as it did not show any pronounced tendency to accumulate in the blood, 

 it is obvious that its füll effects must have been registered outside of the 

 circulation. The organism * tolerates ' a great amount of injury, but 

 it has not been shown that the development of tolerance f or aluminium 

 is either a common achievement or a desirable attainment. 



" It should not be forgotten that the influence of a given substance 

 must be considered, in its practical aspects, from the Standpoints of 

 actual conditions attending its introduction into an organism. What 

 are its effects on individuals, for example, who are temporarily ill or 

 perrnanently diseased? Again, what effects are registered in a per- 

 fectly healthy individual, who takes a small quantity of the substance 

 under consideration with similarly small quantities of equally toxic or 

 even more noxious materials ? What, for instance, may be said of the 

 effect of aluminium from bread made with an alum baking powder, 

 when the bread is eaten with butter colored by a * coal-tar ' dye ; with 

 jam sweetened by Saccharin ; with soup made from ' stock ' preserved 

 by sodium salicylate or salicylic acid; with peas greened by copper 

 Sulfate; with vegetables kept from spoiling by sodium benzoate or 

 benzoic acid, in one case, by borax or boric acid in another; to say 

 nothing of other deleterious substances, such as formaldehyd, sulfurous 

 acid, sodium sulfite, ' ether flavors,' and the like, in various portions 

 of an ordinary meal as it may happen to be served. Even if it may be 

 reasonably urged that the effects of any one of these ' foreign ' sub- 

 stances ' in the quantities eaten ' are negligible, who can say that their 

 collective action after such a meal is of no physiologic consequence? 

 We f requently hear it said with assurance that ' people go on eating 

 all these things without ever knowing it, and yet where is the case of 



