OTHER INORGANIC FOODSTUFFS 49 



Insufficient hemoglobin content of the blood, therefore, and any 

 other type of maldevelopment and malnutrition may originate in 

 either of two ways, namely, through inadequacy of the diet, or through 

 imperfect utilization of substances which are present in abundance in 

 the dietary. Certain mild types of anemia, probably belong to the 

 former category and the consensus of opinion of the physicians is 

 that these are favorably affected by administration of iron. In other 

 types of anemia, in which the utilization of iron is defective or in which, 

 as in the anemia of hemorrhage, the lack of hemoglobin is due to 

 loss or destruction after it has been manufactured, we cannot expect 

 therapeutic administration of iron to be followed by equally favorable 

 results. 



OTHER INORGANIC FOODSTUFFS. 



The remaining inorganic constituents of the body will be but briefly 

 considered at this point, some of them falling under review in other 

 connections in later chapters. While tjie majority of them probably 

 play important or even essential parts in our bodily economy, we have 

 as yet only succeeded in a few instances in obtaining a clue to the 

 nature of these functions. 



Among the metals other than those which we have considered, 

 Magnesium is, from a quantitative point of view, the most important. 

 Magnesium is found in small quantities in all animal and plant 

 cells, and in milk. There appears to be a rather definite relation- 

 ship or proportionality between the magnesium and the calcium 

 contents of the tissues, and from the fact that a trifling excess of 

 magnesium, when introduced into the circulation, causes profound 

 disturbances such as glycosuria, we may conclude that magnesium has 

 powerful physiological actions and that in consequence even the 

 amounts which normally occur in tissues are not devoid of physiological 

 significance. 



It is stated that traces of Lithium are normally found in animal 

 tissues, and it is a much-discussed question whether or not a minute 

 trace of Arsenic is a normal constituent of human tissues, the gravity 

 of the discussion being attributable, of course, to the medicolegal 

 significance of the question. The consensus of opinion appears 

 to be, however, that arsenic is found in human tissues only after the 

 administration of drugs containing arsenic or in districts where arsenic 

 occurs in considerable amounts in the soil and water. 



Among non-metallic inorganic constituents of the body, Chlorine 

 plays a leading part, in the alkali chlorides of the blood and tissues 

 and in the hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice. It is derived from 

 chlorides in the food. 



Fluorine occurs in small amounts in milk (0.00003 per cent.) and 

 is a normal constituent of bones and teeth; it is unquestionably not 

 devoid of significance in the formation of these tissues. 

 4 



