Collected papers on pharmacology and therapeutics.

  • Phillips, Charles D. F. (Charles Douglas Fergusson), 1830-1904.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Collected papers on pharmacology and therapeutics. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    nutrition—the necessity of phosphate for healthy growth, whether vegetable or animal, being espe- cially evident. Experiments with plants have shown that the phosphates are in close relation with the nitrogenous elements. If, for instance, the nitrogenous husk or coating of a seed is re- moved, the phosphates are removed with it, and in the starchy parts of the grain none are found. In the leaves they occur in the parenchyma, not in the nervules, and generally are most abundant in the cellular parts of vegetables wherein nutrition and reproduction are most active. Wheat planted in earth containing phosphate germinates and thrives, but if all phosphate of calcium be removed, it germinates, but soon dies. Peas (which con- tain a larger proportion of azotised matter), when similarly treated, germinate and even bear a crop, but if this crop be sown in a soil without phos- phates it does not flower. That the improvement in nutrition is not due to the presence or absence of phosphorus as such, but to phosphate of lime, is shown by experiments on birds. Wheat contains a large quantity of phosphate of potassium, and when pigeons are fed upon this alone and are pre- vented from getting any carbonate or other salts of calcium, they waste away, and their bones become weak and brittle. If, on the other hand, they can obtain lime in any form, it becomes changed into a chloride during digestion, and combining with the alkaline phosphates of wheat, provides them with