which possessed what we may call a
scurvy reputation, were found to
contain large quantities of potash. Citrate of
potash then was recommended, and has been
used with benefit as a curative agent. But
the full practical application of these
investigations is yet in abeyance. If it was difficult
before to persuade Jack Tar to use lemon-juice,
it is now impossible to induce him to
substitute anything for it. The lemon-juice
idea has taken possession of him, and it is
impossible to squeeze it out of him. Mr.
Busk, the accomplished surgeon of the
Dreadnought, where so many cases of scurvy are
treated, has been asked to introduce
supertartrate of potash. But he said, " When these
poor men come on board, craving and longing
for lemon-juice, fresh beef, mealy potatoes,
and green vegetables, if I should offer them
more junk and citrate of potash, they would
raise a mutiny and burn the ship and me in
it." And so the dietetic history of potash
will remain incomplete until the Dreadnought
be made fire-proof, or sailors be freed from
prejudice. One practical remark may be
here added. Potash, like the other organic
elements, abounds in fresh fruits and
vegetables. In boiling these we dissolve out the
salts, and we do wrong to boil all our
vegetables, and to avoid ripe fruits and fresh
salads. With ordinary digestive capabilities,
these are valuable additions to our diet, and
are considerably used in France with excellent
results.

The metals which most predominate in the
human composition are not those which an
observer of human nature would predicate.
Iron is invariably present in the blood. It
has been supposed that it gave to blood its
red colour; it certainly intensifies the colour.
We constantly meet with the proof. Every
day, in the out-patients' department of the
hospitals, and in ordinary medical practice,
one finds patients with pale lips, and cheeks
that have lost their glow, pallid and debilitated,
complaining of difficulty in breathing,
incapability of exertion, and a host of other
symptoms. The history of the case is written
in the colourless face. There is a want of
iron in the blood. Supply iron to the system,
and the colour reappears, while all the bad
symptoms vanish. Supply it in any form,
—tartrate of iron, sulphate of iron,
potassiotartrate of iron, chalybeate waters (tasting,
according to the grave authority of Sam
Weller, so strongly of warm flat-irons): a
classic would say, restore the iron circulation,
and you bring back a Spartan state of health.
In the more vigorous words of Shakspeare:

Give them great meals of beef, and iron and steel,
They will eat like wolves and fight like devils!

Beef contains a great deal of iron; its ash
contains six per cent. Animal food is, of
course, the natural source of iron to the
system. But iron has been used medicinally
since very early times, with the knowledge
that it had a strengthening power. Prince
Iphicles was the first patient who was treated
with steel-wine. He suffered from pallor
and debility thirty-five hundred years ago.
An oracle desired him to seek a knife which,
years before, he had driven into a sacred
chestnut-tree, to steep it in wine, and drink
the solution of its rust. A modern oracle
would have prescribed a more elegant
form of steel-wine for the fee of one guinea.
Since that time, the alchymists called it
Mars.

A lunatic friend of Dr. Winslow
imagined that his stomach required strengthening
by iron. He followed out his theory
heroically; for, in his stomach were found,
nails, iron tacks, rivets, iron wire, an iron
screw, a brass image of a saint; and part
of the blade of a knife, the whole weighing
twenty ounces; "the which" (like the "Maid
of Orleans) "out of a great deal of old iron,
he chose forth."

Every museum contains specimens of iron
from the stomach of an ostrich. Of course,
we do not swallow iron in the solid form,
like ostriches; but we swallow it dissolved
in water, the universal solvent. Reaching
the tissues in this form, it constitutes an
ingredient of the colouring matter or hæmatine
found in the red corpuscles of the blood
that bears the proportion of seven per cent.
It exists also in the liquor sanguinis in
which they float, as well as in muscle, hair,
and most other structures of the body. The
uses which it serves are best deduced from the
symptoms which its deficiency occasions. On
the theories as to its respiratory influence it
is wise to be dumb; although they bear the
great name of Liebig as their exponent, they
can hardly be accepted, and we hold it to be
a golden rule that none but sound and
proved views should be advanced, except to
professional readers. Suffice it to say, that
iron is found in all our food; that iron is
organised in all our tissues. That its
presence is necessary to health, its absence
productive of chlorosis, a common form of
disease. But, although so generally present,
and so essential to health, the whole bulk of
iron in the body is very small. If we should
carry into action Shakspeare's idea, and "coin
the heart and drop the blood for drachmas," we
should be but very little the wealthier. All
the iron in the body would not be of the value
of a halfpenny, nor the size of a walnut;—on
such small things does life depend.

Yet, although iron be present in scant
quantity, it might be thought that silica, or
flint, would be more plentiful. But the
amount of silica is really very small.
Silicon is the base of flint and granite; it
is, as Avill readily be believed, insoluble,
and excessively hard; when deposited in the
body, it serves only mechanical uses. It is
found in the hair (more in brown hair than
any other), in the nails, in the bones, and in
the enamel of the teeth. It has been