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Chapter 24
The Significance of the Content of the Soil to Human Disease

     THE FAMILIAR expression "mother earth" is justified. When we take from and rob the earth we disturb the natural equilibrium and harmony, producing sickness of the soil, sickness of the plants and fruits (the common nutrition), and finally sickness of both animals and human beings.

     As a physician who has spent much of his life investigating the nutritional aspects of disease, I have often had occasion to observe a definite connection between dietary deficiencies and diseases, and between dietary deficiencies and a sick or poor quality soil.

     The relationship between soil and plants on the one hand and animal and human nutrition on the other is to me a fascinating subject. This relationshjp is a natural cycle in which one may distinguish two great parts:

1. I. The first part, which may be called "external metabolism", is comprised of the following:
   1. (a) Plants and their fruits.
   2. (b) Composition of the soil in which they grow - thus being the real basis of all nutrition.
   3. (c) Transportation, storage and preparation of these food-stuffs.
2. II. The second part, known as "internal metabolism", consists of all the biochemical transformations that take place when such foodstuffs enter the animal body and support the nutrition and growth of its cells and tissues.

     When foodstuffs are ingested, their metabolism is influenced directly by the biochemical changes of the individual body and indirectly by the condition of the soil from which they came. The type of metabolic change thus directly affects the nutrition and growth of the body tissues. There is an external and an internal metabolism upon which all life depends; both are closely and inextricably connected with each other; furthermore, the reserves of both are not inexhaustible. There are, of course, some exceptions, about five to ten per cent of the population who have an extraordinarily well-functioning reabsorption and good storage capacity apparatus.

     This is to emphasize the great importance of metabolism to human health, i.e., the soil as the basis of life which is generally neglected to a great extent.

     I think it was correct for the Department of Agriculture to have given its 1938 yearbook the short but expressive title "Soils and Men", and that of the 1939 yearbook, "Food and Life". We may compare the work of the soil to a mother feeding her baby.

     TABLE I - Average composition of soil solutions from cropped, followed, and air-dry stored soils after 8 years

     ^* P.p.m. - Parts per mille.

     C. A. Browne stated that "the plant is the great intermediary by which certain elements of the rocks, after their conversion into soil, are assimilated and made available for the vital processes of animals and man. The simple inorganic constituents of the atmosphere and soil are selected and built up by the plants into protein, sugar, starch, fat, organic salts and other substances of marvelous complexity."¹⁶²

     Table 1 will give the reader a good picture of the great losses in mineral nutrients sustained by soils as a result of cropping and leaching. The amount of minerals dissolved each year from the soils of the drainage basis of four American rivers has been estimated by Clarke to average 79.6 tons annually per square mile.

     This table shows: the soil needs activity, the natural cycle of growth, rest and return of waste to maintain its productivity - its life. We must not only take, but also give back nitric acid and potassium.

     TABLE II - Effects of continuous cropping on the yield, ash content, and composition of the mineral matter of oats and buckwheat

     The first part of this table makes it clear that the straw of oats shows a reduction of potash to less than a third in ten years, while the whole plant of buckwheat scarcely shows any difference in six years, since leaves and blossoms cannot thrive without sufficient potassium.

     Otherwise, with K deficiency we open the door to acute and chronic diseases. The maintenance of K-prevalence (60 per cent in the most essential organs) is very important in plants, in animals and men.

     TABLE III - Analysis of the ashes of the vines and tubers of 3 varieties of potatoes grown in the same year, on the same soil, under similar conditions of fertilization, cultivation, weather, and harvest

     TABLE IV - Influence of successive years and cuttings upon the potash, lime, magnesia, and phosphoric acid content of the ash of Frankish lucerne

     That deficiencies in minerals of the soil produce some corresponding sicknesses on plants was worked out with great endeavor. Liebig's "law of the minimum" that "the deficiency of one nutrient in the soil will retard the assimilation of other nutrients by plants", could not be maintained, as later experiments revealed.

     One of the most interesting parts of modern research in soil, plant and animal nutrition is that some trace elements - copper, manganese, cobalt, iron, iodine, boron, and zinc - are necessary in parts per million, i.e., very tiny amounts - yet without these trace elements, plants and animals suffer from serious diseases. Iodine is unique among these trace elements as its deficiency has no direct effect on the plant itself; experiments show the same growth and the same yield on 3 or 4 generations with or without iodine, but the following generations showed a significant decrease in crop. (These experiments were done by Prof. Falk and myself.) We did not find any explanation in the observations of others about the detrimental effect on man and domestic animals.

     TABLE V - Composition of South African soils associated with lamziekte and styfziekte diseases of cattle

     The dependence of our body upon the soil is demonstrated in the following two iodine tables. These show that fresh fruits and vegetables - living tissue enzymes - retain iodine in the thyroid in the summer; contrariwise, in and after winter, there is a greater loss of iodine through the urine.

     TABLE VI - Iodine is naturally enriched in the following plants: (Dept. of Agric. Misc. Pub. No. 369)

     TABLE VII - The minor-element content of some important crops in Fluorine: This table is added to show the fluorine content of fruits and vegetables, thus proving that additional fluoridation of water is unnecessary - and can be harmful. Nature uses fluorine in minimum doses in the skin to cover and protect fruits like cherries, peaches, apples, apricots, potatoes. beets, etc. - also in the enamel of our teeth.

     The birth of hairless pigs has been caused experimentally by feeding brood sows diets low in iodine and has been prevented by supplying iodine compounds, seen immediately in the following generations; but, iron in mice takes effect in the fifth or sixth generation only. This shows at the same time that some of the deficiencies are transferred to the following or later generations by nature - through the fertilization apparatus: the egg or spermatozoon - as there is no other way.

     Familiar examples of the results of a deficiency of trace minerals are:

1. (a) Sand drawn of tobacco, due to magnesium deficiency if the soil contains less than 0.2% MgO.
2. (b) Chlorosis of tomatoes on Florida soils, which can be cured by manganese additions.
3. (c) The wilting of leaves in tobacco is caused by copper deficiency.
4. (d) Failure of cattle to develop normally is often due to deficiency of iron, copper or possibly cobalt in plants. (Iron directly connected to chlorophyill.)
5. (e) The abnormal accumulated occurrence of animal and human goitre in parts of Switzerland, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Washington is due to iodine deficiency.
6. (f) "Lame-sickness" of cattle in South Africa is due to deficiency of Ca. K. P. in leached areas.
7. (g) "Bush sickness" of sheep in New Zealand is due to lack of cobalt.
8. (h) Hairless pigs due to iodine deficiency.
9. (i) In human beings some acute and chronic diseases are due to the following deficiencies:
   
   Bad teeth, to K and Ca
   Rickets, to Ca and P
   Anemias, to copper and iron
   Myedema and goitre, to iodine
   Starvation edema, nephritic edema, cardiac edema, cardiorenal syndrome, old age (thyroid deficiency), etc., all more or less due to deficiency of several minerals
   Skin and bone tuberculosis, to K. P. Ca, etc.

     Overliming is productive of chlorosis and with plants susceptible to iron - chlorosis - lime should be sparingly used.

     Soil losses are generally brought about through cropping or erosion - mostly the losses are of N. P. K., less of Ca and magnesium. (See Table 1.) One such group of figures for a silty clay loam at Ithaca, N. Y., shows the average amount removed under a standard rotation (corn, oats, wheat, clover, timothy) to be as follows:

     All various mineral and trace soil losses can best be restored by stable and human manure, except phosphorus. Once the original supply of P has been depleted, it must be replaced by chemical fertilizers in connection with manure for even the high P-content of guano, up to 12 per cent and even 20 to 25 per cent, is not sufficient. Thus, several authors assume that the East Coast may be a desert after 150 to 200 years if we do not help to prevent such continuing conditions as prevail today.

     There are two familiar types of erosion - water and wind erosion. When man steps in and cultivates the land, he creates conditions that may result in an enormous acceleration of erosion. This is the most disastrous of the evil things that can happen to the soil. Forests must be considered the best defense against erosion and on steep slopes certain protection is necessary.

     Factors influencing the mineral composition of crops, according to C. A. Browne, are:¹⁶³

1. Difference in soil (organic - bacterial) (inorganic - pH)
2. Differences in cropping (time)
3. Variety of crop - rotation
4. Period of growth of crop - successive cuttings
5. Climate - sunshine - oxygen
6. Water supply
7. Kind of fertilizer - even ploughing under legumes (lupines)

     (We added: Cultural practices, environmental conditions and earthworms interpolating an intermediate metabolism.)

     Natural manure exerts the best influence on crops: the Peruvian planter can raise 1,760 pounds of cotton per acre, using guano, compared with an average of less than 300 pounds in Louisiana and 390 in Egypt. Therefore, export of guano is no longer permitted in Peru.

     While I was a consultant to the Prussian Ministry of Health in Germany during 1930-33, I had occasion to advise Dr. Hirtsiefer, State Secretary of Health, about the deplorable condition of the soil around certain large cities, especially Essen, Dortmund and Dusseldorf. I suggested the use of human manure, mostly wasted by canalization in place of chemical fertilizers. This was carried out along with the planting of vegetable gardens around these big cities. Composts, i.e., a mixture of dried manure from humans and animals plus straw and leaves, were used to cover these gardens in October and November and were allowed to remain through the winter. The soil was then ploughed in the spring; planting was done from four to six weeks later. Depending upon the original condition of the soil, it took several years or more to develop a fertile topsoil by this method. According to Dr. Hirtsiefer, the results were highly satisfactory, in that vegetables were obtained which were greatly superior in both quantity and quality to those previously obtained by the use of commercial chemical fertilizers. It is interesting that no human disease was transmitted by this type of fertilizing, due, most probably, first to the compost being exposed to sun, air, freezing and snow throughout the winter, and second to the fact that most pathogenic bacteria will not survive long in a healthy soil which normally contains much antibiotic material.

     This is the method of the natural cycle used for over a thousand years by the farmers of the ancient Teutonic or Allemanic Empire, now known as Western Europe.

     For more than 30 years Professor Czapek of Prague collected an enormous amount of information about the mineral content of the lowly potato. He found that whenever artificial fertilizer was used on potatoes, there generally was a great increase in the potato crop but that at the same time there was more sodium chloride and H₂O and less starch and K, P, etc.; therefore, there was a greater vulnerability to many diseases in which excess NaCl and H₂O play a prominent causative and dangerous part. For example, excessive swelling in various degenerative diseases is felt by leading medical authorities everywhere to be closely connected with the excessive intake of NaCl and H₂O. This tendency in humans may more or less be accentuated by potato tubers and other fruits produced by a sick soil. Many chronic diseases start with edema; in acute diseases, where there is more tendency to edema, the degree of disease is relative to the degree of edema.

     In Readers Digest, Dr. Thomas Barrett referred to the earthworm and soil.¹⁶⁴ A French peasant told Dr. Barrett, "Le Bon Dieu knows how to build good earth and he has given the secret to the earthworms." Dr. Barrett believes that the earthworm contributes a great deal toward the building of fertile soil because of the structural changes it makes in the soil, i.e., a loosening of the topsoil. It is my theory that perhaps the earthworm's metabolism also transforms vegetable and animal waste into rich humus - thus they change the earth's minerals into soluable plant food. Their endless tiny tunnels enable rain water and oxygen to penetrate the soil. The earthworm does not require much oxygen as it has a predominantly fermentative or anaerobic metabolism. After being transformed by earthworms, working around the clock, the soil has been found to be five times richer in nitrogen, seven times more plentiful in phosphate, eleven times richer in potash. (Connecticut Experimental Station report.)

     Results: "Vines yielded top-quality grapes. A single carrot, diced and cooked, filled three standard cans. Some of his peaches weighed a pound."

     On a commercial fox ranch in the Harz Mountains the owner made a striking animal experiment. He used vegetables and fruits raised by organic gardening to cure foxes with lung tuberculosis after reading in a journal of my method of treating lung tuberculosis. He cured six out of seven foxes with the dietetic regime, containing among other things a great deal of K plus living tissue enzymes; he observed that the furs became extraordinarily good. He then advertised to buy sick foxes from other farms for very little, and established a large business as the low cost tuberculosis foxes regained their health and produced high quality fox furs.

     We must conclude from these observations that unless the soil is cared for properly, the depleted soil with its abnormal external metabolism will bring about more and more abnormalities of our internal metabolism, resulting in serious degenerative diseases in animals and human beings. The soil needs activity - the natural cycle of growth; it needs rest; it needs protection from erosion; and finally, it needs less and less artificial fertilizer, but more and more of the use of organic waste material in the correct way, to maintain the soil's productivity and life. Food produced in that way - we have to eat as living substances, partly fresh and partly freshly prepared, for life begets life. Organic gardening food seems to be the answer to the cancer problem.

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