IRON--Iron is mentioned separately from other metals because it not only yields salts that occur in small quantities in the body, but because, like sulphur, it enters into the complex nitrogenous portions of the body to form part of the living substance itself.
This organic iron, as it is sometimes called, occurs chiefly in the red blood-corpuscles. The patent medicines which are exploited for the iron they contain, are frauds so far as nourishing the body is concerned. The popular deception is caused by the general belief that all compounds containing the same elements are alike in their uses. One might as well swallow iron filings as to endeavor to build red blood corpuscles out of the mineral solution of iron.
In this lesson I will consider carbon and carbon compounds, which are the bases of all foods and living matter. I will devote but little attention to theories and technicalities, but will discuss the subject from scientific and practical standpoints.
Wood, flesh, and other products of vegetable or of animal life blacken when heated to a sufficiently high temperature. This blackening is due to the presence of carbon. If such substances are heated with an abundant supply of air, the carbon combines with oxygen and forms a colorless gas; that is, the carbon burns.
The principal form in which carbon occurs in nature is in combination with other elements. It occurs not only in all living things, but in their fossil remains, as in coal. All products of plant life contain carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Among the more common of these are sugar, starch, wood, etc. Most products of animal life contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Among these are albumin, fibrin, casein, etc.
Carbon occurs in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxid or carbonic acid gas. It is also found in the earth in the form of salts of carbonic acid or carbonates, such as limestone, marble, and chalk.
The pure element, carbon, is found in nature in the form of diamonds, which are pure crystallized carbon. Small diamonds are now made artificially in electric furnaces. Crystallized carbon also occurs in nature in the form of graphite, from which lead pencils are made. Charcoal, lampblack, and coke are forms of amorphous carbon which contain a very small percentage of impurities.