MAN CHEMICALLY CONSIDERED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2416, 11 April 1922, Page 4

MAN CHEMICALLY CONSIDERED.

ONLY EQUALS S 3 DOZEN EGGS. A well-known American writer on scientific subjects, Dr. W. H. Ballon, writes in the New York American that “man is not just what we thought he was, nor what women think he is. For’that matter, a man and a woman are one and the same thing from ,the chemical standpoint, and the sex of the human being cuts no ice whatever. The chemists of the world look upon anything, organic or inorganic, as just something made up of many somethings. A prattling infant means no more to them than a horse-chestnut, except as the compositions differ. “If you will let them vivisect vou

alive, they will soon tell you the component parts of the soul, which they will surely capture and analyse as it leaves the body. In answer to the question from their standpoint, ‘What is man?’ hei’e is their latest, dictum:—

“Break 1,000 eggs, including shells, into a huge receptacle, and all of the contents will be found required to make a man (or woman) from his toe nails to the most delicate tissues of his - brain.

“If, then, you eal three eggs daily, in less than one year you will have consumed an entire lninmu being, or at least, what a human being consists of chemically. But the chemist does not deduce from this that one should eat eggs. Not at all. He deduces that since the egg and you are one and the same thing, chemically, you should cat such things as eggs are formed of, so that you will be conslnnlly reproducing your structure, as if were. “The ideal unit of weight for a man is 1501 b., so you had host keep I rimmed up or down lo that. This unit constitutionally po.-sosscs 3,500 cubic feet of gases, so wo know now why Senator Borah or Colonel Bryan can talk twenty-four hours on a stretch to defeat a hill or get it off his chest, to say nothing oik why an auditorium filled with women is confounded acoustically by them all talking at once. “These gases comprise oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, worth by meter for illuminating purposes, say, 3dol. CO cents. Also, our unit has sufficient fats to make a 151 b. candle —more light on the subject. Ho has 221 h. and lOoz. of carbon, sufficient to produce 9,200 lead pencils.

“Assuming, of course, that our unit man is healthy and normal, he contains <s4oz. of phosphorus, a deadly'poison which would do for 800,000 matches, or enable 500 men to commit suicide.

“WeTsay of a girl, ‘How sweet she is.’ Well, just as sweet chemically ns a man. Our unit —and the girl—contain the equivalent of exactly sixty lumps, of sugar-such ns you put in your coffee. “Sugar is 'the sole muscle builder chemistry finds, and hence those essential sixty lumps arc in your system, manufactured right within yon by natural methods. The athlete knows -that a few lumps, of sugar will add many foot pounds to his muscular ability. When your muscles .cramp it shows a deficiency of sugar within. Help out f lic sugar planters now and then. “And then, our man unit lias twenty good-sized spoonsful of saltwit bin him. So those native tribes which the explorers (ell us do not eat salt get it just the same. “On the contrary, there is danger, or said to be, in eating too much salt. Right in Now York City we have one big corporation furnishing sea salt; liquid for injection in the veins of those who are sick because they cannot manufacture sufficient salt within; and another corporation which takes out of the system the surplus salt which lias produced certain diseases by a solution of potassium nitrate, also injected into the veins. “Put our unit man into a compressor, say the chemists, and he will yield 38 quarts of distilled water. whereas an oyster will yield 98 per cent, of water. Now you know why, on a hot, humid day in summer you look and feel like a dish rag; also you should know why in winter you should take Turkish or Russian baths to get rid of any excess over your quota, or take it out by dry heat of 120 degrees. “The chemist, having put you through the compressor, finds besides water, in pawing over the debris, much starch, chloride of potash, fluorine, chlorine, iodine, silicon, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, hydrochloric acid, lithium and traces of manganese, copper and lead. “Look at vour pet cat. Tt has some 238 hones in its skeleton, and so have you, and also precisely the same hones are between one-third and one-half of them reptile hones at that. There are from 18 to 20 lbs. of blood, one one-eighth the weight of the unit of man. Me are now confronted with a school termed chemical anatomists, and we are hound to find out something about man, after all.

“The chemical anatomist, however, is constant ly devising new in - s!rumen!s and methods to get at and analyse living material, and will ultimately ferret out all the remaining truths about the unit man.”

An extraordinary story was told to the Willesden magistrate when Benjamin Thorne, a fifteen-year-old hoy, of Cambridge Road, Kilburn, was accused of stealing 17s (id from his father. The father said that when the boy was thrashed lie ran away from home, but returned next day. As he refused to have him back, the boy called a policeman and insisted on being charged. The boy stoutly denied taking the money. His father had falsely accused him, and had turned him out of: the house without hat or coat, and he spent the night in the cold. Tn remanding the hoy, the magistrate said there was yet no evidence against him. “It is a very serious thing,” he added, addressing the father, “to turn a hoy out into the street. AVill you take him home during the remand?” The father: No, not for £IOO. He is (he biggest scoundrel unhanged, and wants putting in a place where he can’t got out. The boy was sent (o the remand home.