SOME FAMILIAR VEGETABLES 

 ELECTRICALLY CONSIDERED 



GENERALLY speaking, those parts of vegetables which, 

 yield a negative galvanometric reaction are unsuited 

 to human consumption, but it does not necessarily follow 

 that because those negative parts are fibrous or inedible, or 

 that poisons are, as a rule, present in excess in the roots, 

 stem and venation of plants, all are equally unsuitable for 

 food, or are to be avoided on account of their toxins. Poisons 

 in suitable doses enter into nineteen out of every twenty 

 prescriptions written, and in vegetables their proportions 

 are so adjusted by the Great Physician as to be harmless in 

 the quantities we ordinarily assimilate. Other vegetable 

 substances, such as Rhubarb leaves — and in this case the 

 poison is principally contained in the negative venation — 

 give warning of the dangerous character of their chemical 

 secretion by setting up acute pain when they are eaten, 

 and it is quite within the bounds of possibility that much 

 of our knowledge of vegetable poisons has been derived 

 from the painful experience of venturesome or foolish persons. 



With this preamble we may proceed to the consideration 

 of some of the vegetables which enter largely into our diet, 

 commencing with examples of that interesting family, the 

 Cabbage tribe ! 



It is well to premise, however, that although plants are 

 mainly dependent upon the earth for their electrification 

 they are not entirely so. Nature very seldom, if ever, rehes 

 upon the constant, unintermittent maintenance of any single 

 condition when life depends upon it, and it is, for that and 

 other reasons, probable that electrical generation goes on. 

 in the plant itself. Most, if not all plants contain iron and 

 aU of them inspire oxygen. 



