| Chemistry Biotechnology Since 1880's or Before! The origin of chemistry can be traced back to the 1880's, when it was evolved by David Graham, a British chemist. This discovery was so monumental that 50 years later one of the world's great scholars publicly enthused "There is, as I see it, just one great development left for our time. That is in the understanding of metals. It is the 'Fourth Estate of Matter', the other three being land, water and air." To gain a working conception of what chemistry is, consider that living tissues and organs are simply great masses of cells - billions of them. The energy, the very life-force of these cells, is obtained from certain minerals and metals contained within the human body. There are some 32 of them, including iron, iodine, manganese, and copper, with trace elements of as many others. chemistry is the science which converts those elements into particles so minute that they can be utilized by living cells. A simple illustration will suggest the immense powers that are being unsealed. Suppose we have a cube of iron measuring an inch on each edge. The total surface would be six square inches. The electrical charge is on the surface; therefore, the greater the surface the greater the charge and if we divide the cube of iron into smaller pieces we increase the surface areas. By chemistry that iron cube can be divided into particles so minute that they are invisible, hence instead of six square inches of surface emanating electric energy, we have something like 127 acres. The effect of colloids is explainable in part by electric action. Sick and dead and broken-down cells are attracted to the colloids by electro-magnetic force, as iron filings are attracted to a magnet. The colloids carry those decayed or poisonous substances into the blood stream, and they are eliminated, the system meanwhile adapting what it needs of the colloids. This effect was demonstrated by Dr. Stienmetz, the wizard of electricity, who devised a method of utilizing colloids in the treatment of sinus trouble Normally, nature supplies the cells with these elements in their form. Science has now learned to produce these colloids in the laboratory. "Lately, life has been prolonged by colloid action" revealed Dr. Frederick S. Macy, one of the country's outstanding bacteriologists, "and better knowledge of the subject will certainly result in prolonging the normal term of existence." By means of illustration, he told of a meeting of executives in an office in the RCA Building in New York City. He had shortly before rescued a withered yellow dead orchid from a pile of debris. He had added a teaspoonful of an amber-tinted liquid to a quart of water in which he inserted the flower. They were staring, incredulously, at a fresh and crisp purple orchid, blooming with vibrant colors and new life, which it had maintained for over two weeks. Here, he told the group of executives, was striking indication of the mysteries that lie ahead in that comparatively unexplored realm of science known as chemistry. In the case of the apparently dead orchid, copper in form was all that was needed to restore the proper balance of the minerals and metals that comprised the life cells of the flower. Once that balance was restored, the cells began to function and the orchid lived again. There were other examples he presented of this miraculous ability of colloids to alter conventional approaches to common problems. The Bide-a-Wee Home, New York's famous hospital for cats and dogs, reported curing mange in three days, where it used to take three months. A large Midwestern city was freed from the scourge of goiter when iodine was added to the water supply. A famous institution for the treatment of alcoholism was testing a solution, which apparently not only overcame the effects of excessive drinking but removed the craving for liquor as well. This treatment involved the introduction of metals - gold and iodine, in the case of alcoholism, to correct the unbalance caused by alcoholic poisons. In the Laboratories of America they have a motion picture which is as weird as anything ever shown on a screen - a movie of a headache. The actors are the nerves in a human head, magnified millions of times. You see the headache. Those nerve endings are tangled, twisting, writhing. Then you see the colloids enter. These rescuers, smaller than the blood corpuscles themselves, march straight to the spot where there is an unbalance of the vital metals. You see those laboratory-prepared colloids restore normalcy there at the seat of the trouble. Then you see the nerves cease their twisting, relax, and assume their proper position. Dr. Macy concluded his presentation with a graphic demonstration. In its form, iodine is one of the elements essential to the well-being of human cells. Yet if you drink as little as two or three grains of free iodine, it will kill you. Dr. Macy, when explaining this, held up an eight ounce cup full of iodine. "This cup holds the equivalent of 740 grains of free iodine - enough to kill 300 men." And he drank it. In its form iodine is not only harmless but beneficial. The same is true of arsenic and other deadly poisons. The wonders of chemistry are truly amazing, or as he said in conclusion, "The study of these phenomena constitutes the road to the ultimate in human knowledge." Although today offers its liquid as a growth enhancer, plant elixir, and overall cleaner, it is merely the continuation of the development of a discovery made some 120 years ago. And by the way, the text above comes from a reprint of an article in The Readers Digest, dated March 1936, written by Kenneth Andrews. Copyright © 2008-2018 BioBased.US - All content including, without limitation, text, images, media files, videos, software, and source code is subject to copyright protection and may not be used except with the written permission. |