Potassium deficiency -- part 3In "food"

Potassium deficiency -- part 2In "food"

1936 US Senate document: soil deficiency causes sickness - part 1In "food"

Yesterday’s post began a series on potassium deficiency.

You may wish to read it before continuing with today’s entry which contrasts the experience of a South American tribe with agribusiness and medicine.

This series is inspired and based on the late Joe Vialls’s article on potassium deficiency, which affects most of us. Emphases mine below.

The Yanomami tribe in South America

Vialls read about the Yanomami tribe who live along the Orinoco River, which runs through Venezuela and Colombia.

It should be noted that the Wikipedia entry on Yanomaman languages states:

Yanomami is not what the Yanomami call themselves (an autonym), but rather it is a word in their language meaning “man” or “human being”. The American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon adopted this term to use as an exonym to refer to the culture and, by extension, the people.

But, as we have no other term available, we shall refer to them as Yanomami.

Back to Vialls. He rightly noted that by the early 20th century, the blood pressure of Americans was beginning to rise. By contrast, in the latter part of the century, the Yanomami had much lower blood pressure because they were living closer to undisturbed nature and could get all the nutrients they required — especially potassium.

In fact, anyone living close to the land in an ancient way would have access to potassium, unlike those in industrialised cultures (emphases mine):

Learned doctors published papers on the ‘potassium-sodium balance needed by all humans’, when a quick field trip to almost any Indian Reservation would have reversed their absurd findings in seconds. More and more sodium found its way into every kind of food imaginable, and blood pressures started to rise sharply. By the nineteen-forties, relatively new diseases such as arthritis, hypertension and angina started to climb through the roof, to be met with a veritable shock wave of expensive ‘patent medicines’ to help with the new ‘disease’ problems.

On the Yanomami:

Despite the Yanomami’s overall levels of sodium being incredibly low, researchers who examined more than 10,000 of these cheerful people found that there was a direct correlation between marginally increased sodium intake and increased blood pressure. “… a highly significant statistical relationship was observed between sodium excretion and systolic blood pressure for the 10,079 participants. The higher the urinary sodium excretion [and, therefore, the sodium intake], the higher the blood pressure.”

The reader should remember that for the Yanomami Indians, normal blood pressure averages out at 95/60 and does not increase with age. Try comparing this with the AMA western ‘normal’ blood pressure of 120/80, which then goes up in incremental steps as you ingest more sodium and lose more potassium while getting older. Of course, the medical apologists will claim this is because we are more civilized, have evolved, and are thus ‘different’, but rest assured this is pathetic rubbish.

The only significant difference between the Yanomami and Americans or Australians, is that the Yanomami are stuffed full of healthy potassium, while we are stuffed full of toxic sodium.

There is also a link between potassium intake and weight:

The researchers also noted that another benefit for the Yanomami related to their lack of obesity. “Adults of industrialized populations have an increase in weight with age. The Yanomami Indians did not increase their weight with age.” Short, but to the point. Somebody remind me to add “obesity” to my shopping list of potassium deficiency-related ailments.

Potassium deficiency has been linked to water retention and weight gain.

Vialls’s graphic tells us the rest we need to know about the Yanomami:

Note that the caption mentions ‘slash and burn’ farming with the resulting ash adding potassium to the soil and water.

Agribusiness

Today, burning fields is becoming outmoded in parts of the West. Africa’s Farm Radio has a transcript of an interview which presents both sides. Interestingly, it ends with an agricultural researcher who condemns this practice, making her argument the more powerful:

I feel that today, this practice of burning crop residues and grass should not be encouraged. The nutrients that are released after burning are usually washed away or leached by rain, or eroded by wind. Soil declines in productivity after burning because its nutrients are depleted. Because of this, the ancient farmers who practiced slash and burn had to leave the land for five to 25, even up to 40 years before they could farm the land again. This is impossible today because of population growth, which leaves no time for land to lay idle to regain fertility.

Also:

Spreading residues in the field stops weeds by a combination of shading and smothering. The residues also stop the sun from drying out the ground. This keeps water in the soil so it’s available for crops. Farmers can make holes in the residue layer and plant their crops. Or they can simply spread organic mulch by hand around plants after they emerge. The crops get nutrients from the decaying leaves. The trees’ roots absorb the excess nutrients which are returned to the ground when the trees are pruned.

And, of course:

burning residues and grass releases a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming.

That leads to the host’s conclusion:

Though ash is a natural product that contributes positively, we should be cautious when using it. This is just like snake poison. Snake poison is natural, but can we use it to kill bugs on our farm? …

I urge you to follow the advice we have heard from the researcher if we want to experience great results as farmers.

I’m somewhat suspicious of that line of reasoning. Everyone used to burn their fields. The Yanomami still do.

If anyone reading this has farming experience and can shed light on the subject, please feel free to comment.

The medical establishment and potassium supplements

Vialls’s article states that in the 20th century, the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies realised that heart patients were potassium deficient.

However, what could have been resolved simply and cheaply turned into big business:

In fact these treatments were entirely successful, but the use of a basic mineral that could not be patented by the pharmaceutical companies was frowned on, and medical research grants in this field mysteriously started to dry up. By the late sixties such research has been suppressed, as you can see from the [limited] general references provided at the bottom of this page.

Big Pharma increasingly became a benefactor of medical schools, which has also had a profound and lasting effect on what doctors learn and the way they think:

The pharmaceutical multinationals were by now exerting increasing pressure on the medical fraternity, providing all kinds of ‘assistance’ during their university training, with copious quantities of fancy-sounding scholarships and research grants. Both were vital in helping to get medical doctors to “see things the right way”, meaning of course that profitable drugs were the answer to all ills. As more doctors peddled more drugs to their patients, pharmaceutical corporate profits rose sharply, allowing perks for the doctors to be extended to include ‘training seminars’ at luxury hotels and golf complexes, along with other varied forms of discreet bribery.

By the seventies, all meaningful references to serious mineral deficiencies had been removed from the curriculum, with medical students taught that patients could obtain all the minerals they needed from a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, although their university tutors knew this was a complete lie. Deficiencies manifesting as cramps, arthritis, osteoporosis, hypertension, angina and strokes etc, became ‘diseases’ that could be treated by a truly dazzling array of brightly colored and highly profitable pharmaceutical drugs.

It was all a terrible illusion of course, but the show had to go on. As toxic sodium increasingly overwhelmed healthy potassium, the resulting potassium deficiency caused hardening of the cardio vascular system, and ‘essential hypertension’ [high blood pressure of ‘unknown’ origin] became the order of the day. Incidences of angina, stroke and heart attack increased dramatically, as did stress, with the latter feeding on the former. Because of a lack of space, this report will only cover the effects of potassium deficiency on the cardio-vascular system. Other directly related horrors such as arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes etc. will have to wait for another day.

Tomorrow: Joe Vialls’s experience — don’t try this at home

 

This post concludes a short series on potassium deficiency, inspired and based on the late Joe Vialls’s article on potassium deficiency, which affects most of us.

This entry and the two previous ones — part 1 and part 2 — are on my Recipes/Health/History page. If you have not read them, they add information helpful in understanding this concluding post.

Today’s post includes Joe Vialls’s self-cure for angina — do not try this at home! It is presented as Vialls would have wished — for illustration purposes only.

Emphases mine below.

How much potassium?

The natural reaction for some discovering information on potassium deficiency might be to say, ‘So what? I’m still alive, potassium or not.’

Vialls posited that one can live with a potassium deficiency but that it might well catch up with them in later years. When that takes place, it could be painful:

If Mother Nature was to deprive you of potassium completely, hard scientific evidence proves you would be dead in less than three weeks. But in many ways this would be a merciful release when compared with the infinitely more painful and far slower death caused by slow potassium deprivation, the preferred method of the FDA and AMA. Proper scientists agree the daily potassium requirements of an average adult lie between 3,200 and 4,100 milligrams, but the average potassium intake of Americans through the food chain is only 1,500 to 2,100 milligrams per day, representing an overall average shortfall of 1,850 milligrams.

Obviously humans can survive at these savagely depleted levels, because Americans manage to eke out about 70 years each, before this basic potassium deficiency overwhelms them and they finally die, sometimes in great pain from a number of directly related illnesses including arthritis, osteoporosis, hypertension [high blood pressure], angina, strokes and so on. It is scientifically beyond question that all would live longer and suffer less pain if they received the necessary quantity of potassium each day, which is where the American Food & Drug Administration [FDA] should do a John Wayne job, and ride gallantly to the rescue.

Alas, the Food and Drug Administration has not and will not do so, because of sustained lobby pressure by the pharmaceutical multinationals. Despite having full and unrestricted access to the real scientific data providing hard proof of widespread potassium deficiency bordering on a pandemic, the FDA has deliberately avoided specifying a “Recommended Dietary Allowance” [RDA], while simultaneously passing a law restricting the potassium content of all alternative medicines to a mere 100 milligrams.

Furthermore, as potassium is not fat-soluble, such as Vitamin D, we need to have a daily dose. Potassium is water-soluble, exiting the body via perspiration and urine. We lose even more in periods of stress, physical or mental. All the more reason to buy No Salt or Lo Salt, depending on where one lives, to at least attempt to increase our daily intake. This salt substitute product is sprinkled on food and is potassium chloride — sylvite, what people and animals used to eat before table salt. Therefore, it can be used as satisfactorily and safely.

Vialls’s self-adminisered cure for angina — don’t try this at home

Vialls treated himself for angina, the symptoms of which he experienced in 2003, two years before he died.

For most of his adult life, he had what the medical fraternity refer to as ‘essential hypertension’, high blood pressure which cannot be explained. It is a condition that appears to be intrinsic to that person for whatever reason.

Consequently, Vialls’s doctors could not advise him other than to give him a variety of prescription medicines over the years, nothing more — and no advice about potassium levels:

… eight different medical doctors gave me a staggering variety of ‘patent medicines’, none of which produced a steady reduction of blood pressure, though on two notable occasions the medicines caused ‘bad reactions’ which dropped my blood pressure so low and so suddenly, that my wife could barely get a reading. At no time during this 25-year period did any of the medical doctors suggest that it might be a good idea to measure my serum electrolyte levels, in order to check for potassium deficiency. As you might expect, this entire sequence put me off the medical profession in a very big way.

Vialls did not say whether a potassium chloride-based salt substitute existed in Australia when he decided to take matters into his own hands.

He decided not to buy Slow K, a 600mg tablet sold in Australian pharmacies, because:

The problem here is that all chunks of salt are biochemically “hot’, meaning that as the sugar coating wears off the outside of the pill, the chunk of undissolved salt is exposed, and can then come into direct contact with delicate internal tissues. In my casual view, this could easily cause some sort of perforation or an ulcer.

Today, several websites discussing potassium supplements — outside of salt substitutes — say to take them with plenty of water or juice.

What Vialls did next was extreme. His method leaves little to be recommended, although it did work.

He said he was telling his story to illustrate how important potassium is and that one could cure oneself of potassium-deficient diseases without the aid of a physician.

He decided to buy

a kilogram of AR [Analytical Reagent] grade potassium chloride salt from a chemical warehouse, mercifully not yet under the direct control of the American FDA, or the Australian AMA.

Cost wise this was also a plus, because the whole kilogram set me back a mere US$30.00 including taxes, which is cheap enough when you realize that my potassium chloride purchase contained approximately 620 grams [or 620,000 milligrams] of the same potassium the FDA has restricted to 100-milligrams per dose in the health food shops. You do the math. Pop down to your local health food provider and ask for a quote on 6,200 x 100-milligram potassium supplements. Be ready to write a very large check.

His potassium chloride salt was 100% water soluble, which meant that when he mixed it with water and fruit juice, there was no danger of it irritating his stomach or gut.

He figured out that in order to prevent a possible heart attack or stroke from angina attacks which were getting worse and worse, he would have to take huge daily doses of the potassium chloride salt:

a minimum of 50 grams or 50,000 milligrams of potassium, representing about 1/5th of the 250 grams total that an adult male should contain within his body.

Every eight hours for the next ten days, he dissolved 4 g — 400 mg — of the potassium-chloride salt in a mix of water and fruit juice. He drank the preparation slowly each time.

After five days, the angina had disappeared. However, he felt increasingly tired. He could not think straight, either.

He took more of the potassium solution until he went over the 110,000 mg mark:

by then I was so exhausted I could no longer write or use the computer.

After that point, his faculties returned.

This success story is shocking, but Vialls went on to say that during the 1940s, American doctors were allowed to give hypertensive patients 68.2 g — 68,200 mg — of potassium solution over the course of five days:

before their research funding was mysteriously and abruptly withdrawn. When viewed in the latter context, my actions do not seem unreasonable.

After ten days, Vialls’s angina disappeared completely, along with his fatigue and disorientation.

He took daily supplements to maintain his health:

2,000 milligrams potassium per day [3,200 milligrams of AR grade potassium chloride salt], plus 200 milligrams of magnesium orotate to minimize losses.

He gave this disclaimer and justification for sharing his story:

Though medical doctors might rave about me illegally ‘giving medical advice without a license’, I am doing no such thing. In the first place potassium is a naturally-occuring mineral essential in our diets for normal development, which places it firmly in the ‘nutrition’ rather than ‘medical’ basket. Secondly there is no way that any government agency can prevent determined people from getting their hands on potassium chloride if they really wish to do so. The material is produced in bulk and used for hundreds of applications. For example, about every third oil rig drilling in the Rocky Mountains probably has about 25,000 pounds of the stuff, neatly stacked in sacks at the edge of the rig site.

Conclusion

It came as a relief to read his conclusion that the rest of us should use a potassium chloride salt substitute and, where possible, eat fruit and vegetables grown in properly mineralised soil following strict organic rotation.

Of course, the latter is hard to determine, which makes potassium chloride — the sylvite which man and beast ate until the 19th century — a better, more dependable option.

End of series

Last week I mentioned the late Joe Vialls and his investigations.

I don’t agree with everything Vialls wrote, but he looked at every aspect of a topic. His research into health matters was spot on.

One of his articles concerns potassium deficiency, which I’ll write about this week. At the end of that article are ‘Verbatim Unabridged extracts from the 74th Congress 2nd Session, Senate Document #264, 1936’.

The contents of this came from a popular American magazine of the day, Cosmopolitan, a very different iteration of the current title.

‘Dr Z’ of the eponymous medical reports says in ‘Senate Document #264 debunked’ what you will read below is rubbish. It was heartening to see that so many of his readers took exception to what he wrote.

Dr Z did a poor job of debunking. One of the glaring errors was not even bothering to look up Cosmopolitan in a search engine.

Dr Z says, rather irresponsibly:

these are verbatim unabridged extracts of an article from Cosmopolitan magazine in 1936 and probably have about even less scientific credibility as an article from Cosmo would have today.

Had he done a few minutes of research, he would have read that Helen Gurley Brown launched the current Cosmo in 1965. He looks old enough to have known that.

Since its inception in 1886 The Cosmopolitan was, for years, a family-friendly magazine with investigative journalism, short stories and fashion spreads. In the 1950s, it was transformed into a literary magazine and, finally, a decade later, became the single women’s publication we recognise today.

What Dr Z does provide, albeit dismissively, is useful information as to how the extracts from The Cosmopolitan‘s article came to appear in a Senate document:

It’s not research, it wasn’t commissioned by and had absolutely nothing to do with the government other than the fact that Senator Duncan Fletcher, Democrat of Florida, asked that it be put into the Congressional Record (two weeks before his death of a heart attack at the age of 77).

This is the original document, still on the US Senate website. The title page says that it was presented by Fletcher. It is a reprint of Rex Beach’s article about the work of Dr Charles Northen, a physician who went into soil replenishment to better nourish man and beast. He was based in Orlando, Florida, and could have been resident in Fletcher’s constituency. The article says that Northen was considered

the most valuable man in the State.

Poor soil = poor nutrition

The Depression produced hardship, however, as Beach revealed, Northen found it relatively inexpensive to replenish soil with missing minerals necessary for health.

Also, whilst we today wonder how our forebears of the 19th century survived without calling the doctor except in a severe emergency, food had much more nutritional value to it in those days.

Excerpts and a summary of Beach’s article follow. If you prefer a version other than the PDF, an alternative format is here. I’ve added sub-headings for easier navigation. Emphases in bold below are mine.

Food poor and more needed

Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until the depleted soils from which our foods come are brought into proper mineral balance?

The alarming fact is that foods — fruit and vegetables and grains — now being raised on millions of acres of land no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us — no matter how much of them we eat!

This talk about minerals is novel and quite startling. In fact, a realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that the textbooks on nutritional dietetics contain very little about it. Nevertheless it is something that concerns all of us, and the further we delve into it the more startling it becomes.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that a carrot is a carrot–that one is about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But it isn’t; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be lacking in the particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are supposed to contain. Laboratory tests prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the eggs and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they were a few generations ago. (Which doubtless explains why our forefathers [and foremothers] thrived on a selection of foods that would starve us!) No one of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply their system with the mineral salts they require for perfect health, because their stomach isn’t big enough to hold them! And we are running to big stomachs.

No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of so many calories or certain vitamins or a fixed proportion of starches, proteins, and carbohydrates. We now know that it must contain, in addition, something like a score of mineral salts.

It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99 percent of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in disease. Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one or another element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer, shorten our lives.

Northen ridiculed

Following a wide experience in general practice, Dr. Northen specialized in stomach diseases and nutritional disorder. Later, he moved to New York and made extensive studies along this line, in conjunction with a famous French scientist from 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 therefore, 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 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. Disorder 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.”

What mineral deficiency means

“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 or lands, even 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 improvement in food value but also an increase in quantity and quality.)

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 effect the growth and development, 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 feeding. They can be made quarrelsome and belligerent; they can even be turned into cannibals and be made to devour each other.

A cage full of normal rats will live in amity. Restrict their calcium, and they will become irritable and draw apart from one another. Then they will begin to fight. Restore their calcium balance and they will grow more friendly; in time they will begin to sleep in a pile as before.

Many backward children are “stupid” merely because they are deficient in magnesia. We punish them for OUR failure to feed them properly.

Certainly our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems than upon the calories or vitamins or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein, or carbohydrates we consume.

It is now agreed that at least 16 mineral elements are indispensable for normal nutrition, and several more are always found in small amounts in the body, although their precise physiological role has not been determined. Of the 11 indispensable salts, calcium, phosphorous, and iron are perhaps the most important.

Regional statistics from the 1930s

The article goes on to list some of the mineral deficiencies around the United States in the 1930s, which I shall summarise below:

• Calcium is essential for proper nerve and cell functions. Yet, a Columbia University study showed that 50% of Americans were calcium ‘starved’. A study of patients in a New York hospital showed that, out of 4,000, only 2 had adequate calcium in their bodies.
• A city in the Midwest had calcium-poor soil. Of 300 children examined, 90% had bad teeth. Sixty-nine per cent had nose and throat problems, swollen glands and either enlarged or diseased tonsils. Over a third had poor eyesight, joint problems and anaemia.
• Calcium and phosphorus need to be consumed together for either to work properly. Children require the same amount as adults. Adequate phosphates in the bloodstream prevent tooth decay. Livestock died when one or the other mineral was deficient in the soil they grazed on.
• Our blood requires iron, yet our bodies cannot process it unless we have adequate amounts of copper. Florida’s cattle were dying of ‘salt sickness’. When the soil of their pastures was examined, it lacked iron and copper. As the grass they consumed lacked these elements, there was no way anyone eating the beef of the surviving cattle could obtain these necessary nutrients.
• A lack of iodine disrupts thyroid function and can cause goiters. Humans only need a tiny amount each day — fourteen-thousandths of a milligram — yet the Great Lakes region was a ‘goiter belt’ and pockets of the Northwest showed severe iodine deficiencies.

Then, as now, medical specialists giving vitamin and mineral supplements to people seemed to be the way forward. Ironically, we need only trace amounts a day yet cannot manage to get that. However, the body best absorbs these when they are present in food rather than tablets, capsules or liquids. This is because they are colloidal — in fine suspension — when present in food and easily absorbed into the body.

Tomorrow: Why the medical establishment didn’t — doesn’t? — care

 

Yesterday’s post had the first part of a two-part series on American soil deficiency in 1936.

The source material, at the request of a US Senator at the time — Duncan Fletcher (D – Florida) — was included in the 74th Congress 2nd Session, Senate Document #264, 1936.

The original document is on the US Senate website. (An HTML version is here.) It is an article from a family news magazine, The Cosmopolitan, which much later became the title we know today.

The article is called ‘Modern Miracle Men’ written by Rex Beach about Dr Charles Northen, a physician who went into soil replenishment to better nourish man and beast. He was based in Orlando, Florida, and could have been resident in Fletcher’s constituency. The article says that Northen was considered

the most valuable man in the State.

Yesterday’s post excerpted and summarised Northen’s findings about the poor mineral quality of America’s soil in the 1930s. It had significantly declined since the 19th century and, in many parts of the country, food and meat had little nutritional value.

Today’s excerpts and summary discuss the second half of the article. Emphases in bold are mine.

I cannot help but think we are in no better shape today with regard to the food we consume.

Why no one cared — or cares?

Northen was decried for his research.

The article points out that the medical establishment had been wrong before: in the late 19th century, the Medical Society of Boston condemned the use of bathtubs!

Similarly, physicians and other experts were — are? — wrong on ignoring soil deficiencies. In the 1930s, textbooks kept using outdated analyses from a bygone era decades before when soil was still rich in nutrients.

Although Northen was able to demonstrate that soil samples can vary greatly even in a local area, his peers scoffed: ‘So what?’

Northen’s work on various farms and orchards was exemplary. By carefully mineralising the soil, grass was better, fruit trees pest-free and abundant whilst livestock were healthier. All those fresh products then went into the human food chain, improving the lives of the lucky Americans who ate them.

Northen’s wisdom — interview

Beach, who owned a farm, ended the article by redacting part of the interview Northen gave him.

Although Northen was elderly at the time, he was a goldmine of statistics, experience and knowledge. As we’ll find out, Beach turned around his own soil with Northen’s help.

“Sick soils mean sick plants, sick animals, and sick people. Physical, mental, and moral fitness depends largely upon an ample supply and a proper proportion of the minerals in our foods. Nerve function, nerve stability, nerve-cell-building likewise depend thereon. I’m really a doctor of sick soils.”

“Do you mean to imply that the vegetables I’m raising on my farm are sick?” I asked.

“Precisely! They’re as weak and undernourished as anemic children. They’re not much good as food. Look at the pests and the disease that plague them. Insecticides cost farmers nearly as much as fertilizers these days.

“A healthy plant, however, grown in soil properly balanced, can and will resist most insect pests. That very characteristic makes it a better food product. You have tuberculosis and pneumonia germ in your system but you’re strong enough to throw them off. Similarly, a really healthy plant will pretty nearly take care of itself in the battle against insects and blights –and will also give the human system what it requires.”

“Good heavens! Do you realize what that means to agriculture?”

“Perfectly. Enormous saving. Better crops. Lowered living costs to the rest of us. But I’m not so much interested in agriculture as in health.”

“It sounds beautifully theoretical and utterly impractical to me,” I told the doctor, whereupon he gave me some of his case records.

For instance, in an orange grove infested with scale, when he restored the mineral balance to part of the soil, the trees growing in that part became clean while the rest remained diseased. By the same means he had grown healthy rosebushes between rows that were riddled by insects.

He had grown tomato and cucumber plants, both healthy and diseased, where the vines intertwined. The bugs ate up the diseased and refused to touch the healthy plants! He showed me interesting analysis of citrus fruit, the chemistry and the food value of which accurately reflected the soil treatment the trees had received.

There is no space here to go fully into Dr. Northen’s work but it is of such importance as to rank with that of Burbank, the plant wizard, and with that of our famous physiologists and nutritional experts.

“Healthy plants mean healthy people“, said he. “We can’t raise a strong race on a weak soil. Why don’t you try mending the deficiencies on your farm and growing more minerals into your crops?”

I did try and I succeeded. I was planting a large acreage of celery and under Dr. Northen’s direction I fed minerals into certain blocks of the land in varying amounts. When the plants from this soil were mature I had them analyzed, along with celery from other parts of the State. It was the most careful and comprehensive study of the kind ever made, and it included over 250 separate chemical determinations. I was amazed to learn that my celery had more than twice the mineral content of the best grown elsewhere. Furthermore, it kept much better, with and without refrigeration, proving that the cell structure was sounder.

In 1927, Mr. W. W. Kincaid, a “gentleman farmer” of Niagara Falls, heard an address by Dr. Northen and was so impressed that he began extensive experiments in the mineral feeding of plants and animals. The results he has accomplished are conspicuous. He set himself the task of increasing the iodine in the milk from his dairy herd. He has succeeded in adding both iodine and iron so liberally that one glass of his milk contains all of these minerals that an adult person requires for a day.

The article goes on to say that lack of iodine causes goiters.

Goiters were a huge health problem then. My maternal grandmother, who was raising a large family in that era, was preoccupied by goiter, even though no one in her family had any, thankfully. But she always impressed upon us grandchildren that eating enough iodine-rich foods and using iodised salt was essential.

She was not wrong. As the article states, the Great Lakes Region, the Northwest and South Carolina had significant numbers of people with goiter. Milk was a good way of supplying iodine. The aforementioned Mr Kincaid raised a Swiss heifer calf, taking care to mineralise her pasture and provide her with a balanced diet. She went on to become the third all-time champion of her breed, supplying 21,924 pounds of milk and 1,037 pounds of butter in one year!

Illinois farmers then began following Kincaid’s example. Fertiliser companies were quick to promote the mineral content of their products. Minerals were also made into colloidal form for inexpensive yet efficient soil correction.

Dangers then and now

The article concludes with more ailments caused by depleted soil. Some of them, such as heart disease, can be fatal. Others, like arthritis, can be debilitating.

On a wider scale, without these essential minerals in our food, we become increasingly susceptible to infection.

Northen suggested that the American populace of the 1930s clamour for food from good soil that would naturally supply their nutritional needs. He also urged them to insist that doctors and health departments establish standards of nutritional value.

He said that farmers and growers would eagerly respond to higher soil nutrition because it would mean better quality crops, better yield and happier customers.

After all, he reasoned, it is easier and less costly to cure sick soil than sick people.

It makes sense. Yet, is that what happened?

Tomorrow: ‘Sick soil’ in North America and the UK