MODERN MIRACLE MEN 3 
he assumes that by adding a little fertilizer to it, a satisfactory vege¬ 
table or fruit can be grown. 
“The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some 
of them aren’t worth eating, as food. For example, vegetation 
grown in one part of the country may assay 1,100 parts, per billion, 
of iodine, as against 20 in that grown elsewhere. Processed milk 
has run anywhere from 362 parts, per million, of iodine and 127 of 
iron, down to nothing. 
“Some of our lands, even in a virgin state, never were well balanced 
in mineral content, and unhappily for us, we have been systematically 
robbing the poor soils and the good soils alike of the very substances 
most necessary to health, growth, long life, and resistance to disease. 
Up to the time I began experimenting, almost nothing had been done 
to make good the theft. 
“The more I studied nutritional problems and the effects of mineral 
deficiencies upon disease, the more plainly I saw that here lay the 
most direct approach to better health, and the more important it 
became in my mind to find a method of restoring those missing 
minerals to our foods. 
“The subject interested me so profoundly that I retired from 
active medical practice and for a good many years now I have devoted 
myself to it. It’s a fascinating subject, for it goes to the heart of 
human betterment.” 
The results obtained by Dr. Northen are outstanding. By putting 
back into foods the stuff that foods are made of, he has proved himself 
to be a real miracle man of medicine, for he has opened up the shortest 
and most rational route to better health. 
He showed first that it should be done, and then that it could be done. 
He doubled and redoubled the natural mineral content of fruits and 
vegetables. 
He improved the quality of milk by increasing the iron and the iodine 
in it. 
He caused hens to lay eggs richer in the vital elements. 
By scientific soil feeding, he raised better seed potatoes in Maine, 
better grapes in California, better oranges in Florida and better field 
crops in other States. (By “better” is meant not only an improve¬ 
ment in food value but also an increase in quality and quantity.) 
Before going further into the results he has obtained, let’s see just 
what is involved in this matter of “mineral deficiencies”, what it may 
mean to our health, and how it may affect the growth and develop¬ 
ment, both mental and physical, of our children. 
We know that rats, guinea pigs, and other animals can be fed into 
a diseased condition and out again by controlling only the minerals in 
their food. 
A 10-year test with rats proved that by withholding calcium they 
can be bred down to a third the size of those fed with an adequate 
amount of that mineral. Their intelligence, too, can be controlled 
by mineral feeding as readily as can their size, their bony structure, 
and their general health. 
Place a number of these little animals inside a maze after starving 
some of them in a certain mineral element. The starved ones will be 
unable to find their way out, whereas the others will have little or no 
difficulty in getting out. Their dispositions can be altered by mineral 
