2 
MODERN MIRACLE MEN 
This discovery is one of the latest and most important contributions 
of science to the problem of human health. 
So far as the records go, the first man in this field of research, the 
first to demonstrate that most human foods of our day are poor in 
minerals and that their proportions are not balanced, was Dr. Charles 
Nor then, an Alabama physician now living at Orlando, Fla. His 
discoveries and achievements are of enormous importance to mankind. 
Following a wide experience in general practice, Dr. Northen 
specialized in stomach diseases and nutritional disorders. Later, he 
moved to New York and made extensive studies along this line, in 
conjunction with a famous French scientist from the Sorbonne. In 
the course of that work he convinced himself that there was little 
authentic, definite information on the chemistry of foods, and that 
no dependence could be placed on existing data. 
He asked himself how foods could be used intelligently in the 
treatment of disease, when they differed so widely in content. The 
answer seemed to be that they could not be used intelligently. In 
establishing the fact that serious deficiencies existed and in searching 
out the reasons therefor, he made an extensive study of the soil. It 
was he who first voiced the surprising assertion that we must make soil 
building the basis of food building in order to accomplish human 
building. 
“Bear in mind,” says Dr. Northen, “that minerals are vital to 
human metabolism and health—and that no plant or animal can 
appropriate to itself any mineral which is not present in the soil 
upon which it feeds. 
“When I first made this statement I was ridiculed, for up to that 
time people had paid little attention to food deficiencies and even 
less to soil deficiencies. Men eminent in medicine denied there was 
any such thing as vegetables and fruits that did not contain sufficient 
minerals for human needs. Eminent agricultural authorities insisted 
that all soil contained all necessary minerals. They reasoned that 
plants take what they need, and that it is the function of the human 
body to appropriate what it requires. Failure to do so, they said, 
was a symptom of disorder. 
“Some of our respected authorities even claimed that the so-called 
secondary minerals played no part whatever in human health. It is 
only recently that such men as Dr. McCollum of Johns Hopkins, 
Dr. Mendel of Yale, Dr. Sherman of Columbia, Dr. Lipman of Rutgers, 
and Drs. H. G. Knight and Oswald Schreiner of the United States 
Department of Agriculture "have agreed "that these minerals are 
essential to plant, animal, and human feeding. 
“We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which 
are indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance 
for the normal function of some special structure in the body. Dis¬ 
order and disease result from any vitamin deficiency. 
“It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the 
body’s appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they 
have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can 
make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless. 
“Neither does the layman realize that there may be a pronounced 
difference in both foods and soils—to him one vegetable, one glass of 
milk, or one egg is about the same as another. Dirt is dirt, too, and 
