Many recent experiences in sanitation and in medicine force upon
us the conclusion that the value of chemical analysis in biological
questions is not final. Water which has been found to contain the
bacillus of typhoid fever has passed the tests of the chemist, and
there can be little doubt that in the past many samples of wholesome
water have been condemned for containing the products, in the form of
nitrates, of oxidised organic matter. Again, the action of toxins and
antitoxins is quite beyond the reach of the chemist, and the marvellous
results which have been obtained by administering thyroid extract
teach us that in dietetics there is something which the chemist cannot
gauge. Raw thyroid and cooked thyroid would give the same results on
analysis, but how different is the physiological result! How different
is the action of the carefully dried stomach of the calf in the form
of rennet or pepsin as compared with a dish of tripe! These facts must
force upon us the speculation that the same thing may produce very
different effects according to the temperature to which it may have
been artificially raised by drying under a vacuum or by cooking, and
must drive us to the conclusion that although it may be advisable under
certain circumstances to boil our milk or our water, it is possible
that the act of cooking may change, we know not to what degree, the
physiological action of the milk or water which has been thus treated.
My experience tells me that the chemists are wrong when they say that
human excreta are of small manurial value. Their analyses are doubtless
right, but their conclusions are erroneous and very dangerously
misleading. In this statement I should be supported by the whole of the
'Far Eastern' nations.
The ultimate manurial value of urine is doubtless very great, although
when pure or nearly pure it is very deadly to herbage. The only
satisfactory way of using urine as a manure is to imitate the farmer,
by mixing it with an absorbent material, such as straw, sawdust,
peat, earth, paper, cotton waste, wool waste, &c., placing it upon the
surface of the ground and digging or ploughing it in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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