202 Natural Salvation. 



cite protoplasmic action which may speedily result in its 

 expulsion, resolution, or eucystment, where a merely re- 

 actionless particle of silica, or lime, might remain as an 

 obstruction. Is the somewhat discolored, more rigid, less 

 elate condition of the fibrils of a brain cell, in an aged 

 organism, due to infiltered, accumulated dirt ? 



The question here raised, as regards dirt, is whether 

 minute particles of inorganic matter, or obdurate organic 

 matter, entering the plasma of the blood, find ultimate 

 lodgment in the cells, and remaining there undissolved, 

 chemically unassimilated, or unexpelled, give rise to those 

 aspects which distinguish aged from young cells. Are 

 accumulations of microscopic dirt in the cells one charac- 

 teristic of old age? Is all organic life from infancy to 

 old age and death a hapless struggle with dirt ? 



Since 1896, however, we have seen reason to believe, 

 that while the dirt hypothesis of old age contains scintilla 

 of truth, it must, like the foregoing, be ranked with proxi- 

 mate rather than with primary causes of old aging. 



Dr. De Lacy Evans also believed that old-aging re- 

 sulted from accumulations of "earthy salts," largely 

 phosphate of calcium and silica, in the tissues, and the 

 unregulated wasting of the cell protoplasm by oxygen. 

 This opinion has gone the rounds of both medical and 

 popular journals, with variations. We now know that 



