20 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
It is not mucli ; but then it must be supplied^ or disease_, dire 
and fatal^ sets in. It will not do to supply one salt for another. 
Spare the lime salts^ and the bones give way, and rickets, 
crooked spines, and feeble bones are the result. Give up eating- 
salt, and the blood suffers, the cheeks get pale, the hver refuses 
to perform its functions, and the frame goes to rack and ruin. 
Eat as much lime and soda as you will, the muscles will fail to 
do their duty without potash. Scurvy sets in, and all its 
frightful consequences are the result. But how are we to 
know where to get these things ? With the exception of com- 
mon salt they are none of them brought to the table. I think 
they might be brought to the table ; a mixture of the 
phosphate of lime, and soda, and the chloride of sodium and 
potassium, might be added to our food in such a way as to 
secure a due supply. But even the nineteenth century Bnghsh- 
man is not sufficiently civihsed to act upon his reason at pre- 
sent, and therefore no attempt will be made to introduce them 
directly into the system, although they can be demonstrated 
to be necessary. In the meantime we may comfort ourselves 
by a knowledge of the fact that all our vegetable and animal 
food contains a certain quantity of these mineral constituents. 
If we turn to tables of analyses of various kinds of food, we 
find that in every pound wheat contains a quarter of an ounce 
of mineral matter ; potatoes, the eighth of an ounce ; and 
cabbages, lettuces, watercresses, fruits, and especially tea, 
contain large quantities of these mineral matters. So that we 
really get them in our ordinary food ; but we may have them in 
too small quantities, — especially may they be deficient in boiled 
food, unless the water in which it is cooked be taken in the 
form of broth or soup. I especially recommend to my country- 
men the practice of habitually taking soup, which contains dis- 
solved in it mineral substances. To soup should be added fresh 
vegetables of any kind that are in season. The practice of 
eating salads and uncooked fruits every day is to be highly 
commended for the same reason. The beneficial effects of the 
potato as an article of diet are more to be attributed to its 
mineral than other constituents. To banish potatoes from the 
diet without substituting other vegetable food, is to invite 
the most destructive diseases to which the human frame is 
liable. 
Amongst the mineral constituents of our food must be 
placed water. One hundred and eleven pounds out of the 
hundred and fifty-four of a human body is water. We are not 
so completely organised water as jelly-fishes; but we are, 
nevertheless, exceedingly watery beings. The water of which 
our bodies are composed passes away at the rate of one 
hundred ounces a day ; and if we drink largely, larger 
