It appears from the reasoning of Baron Liebig, that when we replace the
flesh and bread of ordinary diet by juicy vegetables and fruits, the blood
is beyond all doubt altered in its chemical character, the alkaline
carbonates being substituted for the phosphoric acid and alkaline
phosphates, which are supposed to exert a disturbing influence in so many
diseases, especially typhoid and inflammatory affections. The gluten of
grain, and the albumen of vegetable juices, are identical in composition
with the albumen of blood, but there are varieties of wheat, the ashes of
which are in quantity and in relative proportion of the salts the same as
those of boiled and lixiviated meats, and it cannot be maintained that
bread made of such flour would, if it were the only food taken, support
life permanently.
The experiments of the French academicians, show that dogs fed
exclusively on white bread, made from the sifted flour, died in forty
days; but when fed on black bread (flour with the bran), they lived
without disturbance of health. Bread should always be made of grains grown
in healthy places, and should contain the entire seed, with the exception
of the husk; then it will realize the idea of Paracelsus: "When a man eats
a bit of bread, does he not therein consume heaven and earth, and all of
the heavenly bodies, inasmuch as heaven by its fertilizing rain, the earth
by its soil, and the sun by its luminous and heat-giving rays, have all
contributed to its production, and are all present in the one substance?"
Desiccated vegetables, which have lost the water of vegetation and other
gaseous elements, which chemistry thus far has been unable to discover,
cannot adequately replace the fresh articles; the particular principle,
the water of vegetation, can no more be restored to them than the dust of
the crushed quartz can be recrystallized by the simple addition of water.