Animals cannot use soil materials, nor can they synthesize carbohydrates out of carbon and water. For the same reason that they cannot utilize the minerals of the soil, but must receive them in the form of organic salts resulting from plant processes, they cannot utilize drug minerals or the inorganic salts produced in the chemical or pharmaceutical laboratory.

The animal cannot synthesize amino-acids, the constituent "building stones" of proteins; nor sugars, the constituent "building stones" of fats; nor vitamins. He must receive these from the plant kingdom. Synthetic vitamins, now so much advertised, are no more useful than the inorganic salts offered by the chemists. Animals are dependent upon plants for organic foods--for proteins, sugars, starches, fats, organic salts and vitamins. All foods come, either directly or indirectly from the plant kingdom.

We have it contended by the proponents of the use of various inorganic salts, called by them, "tissue salts," "bio-chemical remedies," "vito-chemical remedies," etc., that there is no difference between crude minerals and organic salts except in the fineness of the particles. They contend that if these inorganic substances are ground finely enough, the body can make use of them. So, they grind these in a suitable medium and prescribe and administer them.

Physical chemistry reveals that a mineral may be divided into the smallest possible particle--individual ions--by simply dissolving it in water. Experience with these salts proves that they are not remedial. Dr. Tilden's testimony is to the point. He says he gave them a thorough trial at one time in his career and found them to be worthless.

No animal--there are a few lowly forms that are said to be exceptions to this, but these exceptions are very doubtful--can make constructive use of any mineral unless he gets it through the plant kingdom. The mineral salts must be synthesized into living tissue before the digestive and metabolic systems of man, or animal, can use them in body building, body cleansing or for any other constructive purposes.

The inability of the animal organism to take the elements of earth, air and water and synthesize amino-acids, carbon chains, organic salts, vitamins, etc., from these renders the animal absolutely dependent upon the plant kingdom for its food supply. As these food constituents cannot be synthesized by the animal body its needs for these substances can be satisfied in no other way than by their provision, ready made, in plant foods. The ultimate source of all food needs of the animal body, except water and oxygen, is, therefore, the vegetable kingdom. The main supply would appear to be derived from the green and growing parts of plants.

The animal body is capable of building up the most complex forms of protein providing the necessary carbon chains and amines are supplied in the diet. The cow, the sheep, the pig, the chicken, or other animal that you may eat, is compelled to secure the absolutely indispensable amino acids from external (that is, plant) sources. There is nothing in the animal body that was not derived from the plant kingdom--nothing, that is, except water and oxygen.

The proven fact that the organism of higher animals, is incompetent to synthesize carbon chains, or to effect ring closure and that only in rarest cases can they achieve animation and then only by making use of ready prepared and more complex amino acids, that it cannot synthesize vitamins and organic salts--this lack of ability to make the fundamental syntheses compels the animal to rely exclusively upon organic substances for its food supply. I repeat: the normal order of feeding is, plants feed upon soil and animals feed upon the spare products of plants. The dream of the chemist to be able to reverse this order is an expression of his egomania.

Organic salts are in the colloidal form. Colloidal iron or calcium or phosphorus are usable. Inorganic salts are crystaloids and are not usable. Crude minerals, after they have been organized by the plant kingdom into highly complex compounds, are assimilated and used by the body, but taken in their elementary state, are injurious, some of them even deadly poison, to the body. The plant takes the elements of the soil and synthesizes these into acceptable compounds. The animal is limited to these compounds.

Carque very appropriately says: "Even the embryonic plant must feed on the organic compounds of the seed until its roots and leaves are grown. The elevation and characteristic change of inorganic matter, which takes place principally in the green leaves of the plant, by means of the chlorophyll, is the starting point of all organic combinations. Chlorophyll is, therefore, a substance of great physiological importance."

Only along special lines have chemists been able to repeat or feebly imitate the productions of nature. The essentially living products not only cannot be produced in the laboratory, they are, as yet, but little known. So-called bio-chemistry is not what its name implies. Life can exist only in a complex mixture; the chemist studies merely isolated fragments. The physiological and biological chemists all seem to have missed the conception of the individuality of the living mass, as a complex of elements and compounds, each of which bears a special and vital relationship to each other. Each element is vitally essential to the welfare of the whole mass.

Biochemistry is largely guess work. The chemists do not know exactly what processes take place in the living organism. They write learned treatises on bio-chemistry, but it is 98% guess work.

Just as the animal body is unable to synthesize amino acids, but is confined for its supply of these, to the plant kingdom; so, it cannot synthesize "organic" salts from the crude or "inorganic" salts supplied by doctors and druggists. The plant kingdom is the great laboratory in which animal food is synthesized and our chemists have not learned to duplicate vegetable processes. Imitate some of them, yes, but there is a vast difference between the ability to produce urea and the ability to synthesize proteins.

We must secure our mineral salts from food. We cannot get them from any other source. The power to assimilate crude matter, as it exists in the soil, and convert it into structures of living bodies is a monopoly of the vegetable kingdom. It is the office of plant life or vegetation to take the primary elements in their crude form and convert them into the organic state. No synthetic process known to the laboratory can do this.

After the plant has raised the crude earth-elements to the plane of plant substance, the animal may then take them and raise them still higher, that is, convert them into animal matter. The animal is forced to secure food either directly or indirectly from the plant kingdom. He either eats the plant, or else he eats the animal that has eaten the plant. Air and water form the only exceptions to this rule.