92 Natural Salvation. 



immensely cumbersome and arduous process, attended by 

 great strain and duress of the human organism, all of 

 which science may obviate by presenting a food which 

 will not require such hard physiological labor. The ex- 

 cretion of urea has been held to prove that there is 

 structural waste and replenishment of cell substance. As 

 nutrition is at present accomplished, this appears to be 

 true, the result of a species of internal combustion from 

 oxidation in the cell. Indeed, it is evident that the proc- 

 ess of nutrition within each cell of the organism is, on a 

 small scale, strictly analogous to what takes place in the 

 stomach and intestinal tract of the larger multicellular 

 organism ; that is, that there is intracellular ingestion, ex- 

 cretion, and assimilation of an esoteric plasma which 

 renews the cell. That is what appears to occur; but 

 our question is, Need it occur? Is it anything more 

 or better than a laborious, destructive process which may 

 be obviated altogether by inventing a more ethereal 

 cell food? 



It has come to be doubted even whether a cell, after it 

 has developed and grown to its full size in the adolescent 

 organism, is ever normally destroyed or renewed so far 

 as implying change of structure. The cell structure 

 probably stands during the lifetime of the animal. The 

 cell is no more wasted as to its organella than is the 

 greater animal organism of which it is the vital unit. 

 The physiological cell, indeed, is a minute organism, hav- 



