CHEMISTRY OF THE HUMAN BODY. 217 



tion all the nutrient and effete principles which 

 enter or which are rejected from the human organ- 

 ization, and it is the medium through which it is 

 built up and torn down. Life and death are alike 

 dependent upon its agency. 



Of phosphorus, every adult person carries enough 

 (If pounds) about with him in his body, to make 

 at least 4,000 of the ordinary two-cent packages 

 of friction matches, but he does not have quite 

 sulphur enough to complete that quantity of the 

 little incendiary combustibles. This phosphorus 

 exists in the bones and in the brain, and is one 

 of the most important constituents in the body. 

 Every schoolboy is acquainted with those strange 

 metals, sodium and potassium, for he has seen them 

 flash into a brilliant flame when thrown upon 

 water. The body contains 2 ounces of the former, 

 and a half ounce of the latter metal ; enough for all 

 needed experimental purposes in the schools of a 

 large city. The 12 grains of magnesium would be 

 ample in quantity to form the "silver rain" for -a 

 dozen rockets, or enough to create a light which 

 under favorable conditions could be seen for a dis- 

 tance of twenty miles. 



Our analysis disproves the old vulgar notion, 

 that the blood of ten men contains iron enough to 

 form a ploughshare. The 100 grains of metallic 

 iron found in the blood of a healthy adult would be 



