800 SALTS AS FOOD. [BOOK n. 



system, is going wrong; they suffer from weakness, soon amounting 

 to paralysis, and are often carried off by convulsions. And more 

 or less similar derangements of nutrition follow the absence or a 

 deficiency of individual salts. During starvation these various 

 salts continue to be discharged from the body; in some way or 

 other they are carried along in the metabolic stream, and their 

 presence is in some way essential to the various metabolic 

 processes ; hence they need to be always present in daily food. 

 In what way it is that they thus direct metabolism we do not 

 know ; we are aware that the properties and reactions of various 

 proteid substances are closely dependent on the presence of 

 certain salts; but beyond this we know very little. The in- 

 organic salts are those, the nutritive value of which has been 

 chiefly studied by experiment ; but we have reason to believe that 

 the organic salts, or extractives, which are present in greater or 

 less quantity in all food of both vegetable and animal origin, are 

 no less essential to the proper metabolic activities of the body. 

 The undoubted connection of scurvy with the lack of fresh 

 vegetable food, other conditions helping, may perhaps turn in 

 part on this, for the evidence that the disease is due to the 

 deficiency of potash alone is not conclusive. 



Lastly, water has an effect on metabolism, as shewn, among 

 other things, by the fact that when the water of a diet is 

 increased, the urea is increased to an extent beyond that which 

 can be explained by the increase of fluid increasing the facilities 

 of mere excretion. 



