Baltimore Evening Sun (26 July 1913): 6.

The Hon. Charles M. Levister, bottle-holder to the Hon. William H. Anderson, in the Letter Column:

The Free Lance has charged this writer with ignorance of the Scriptures.

And not only charged it, but also proved it. As soon as the weather cools I hope to start a Bible class for such unfortunate fellows as the Hon Mr. Levister. Their ignorance of the sacred writings is not only revealed by their occasional blunders in exegesis, so astounding to the serious student, but also by the whole tenor of their lives. If the Hon. Mr. Levister will show me any text in the New Testament justifying the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s late attempt upon the virtue of the clergy, I shall be glad to have my head shaved with a broken beer bottle. If he will produce any texts in favor of bogus statistics, lobbying, speakeasies, caffeine, roughhouse preachers, the Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus or the Hon. Young Cochran, I shall willingly go back to Sunday-school.

From the learned Prof. Dr. George W. Carey, of P. O. Box 293, Los Angeles, Calif., comes news of a new system of healing which needs only the help of publicity to put the rollers under allopathy, and even, perhaps, under osteopathy and Christian Science. Its official style and appellation is biochemistry, and according to Dr. Carey, it was invented by Prof. Dr. William [Wilhelm?] H. Schuessler, of Oldenburg, Germany. It rests squarely upon the epoch-making discovery that there are 12 tissue salts in the human body, and that all diseases are caused by a deficiency of one or more of them. Find out what salt is lacking, administer it per esophagus in an appropriate dose, and presto! the patient is as good as new.

But just how do these salts work? What is their precise function? Dr. Carey explains it all very simply in the introduction to his monumental “Biochemic System of Medicine,” a work as large as Osler’s “Principles and Practice” and ten times as fascinating. The salts operate, he says, by stimulating the “organic materials used in building up the human frame.” For example, Kali mur.--the common chloride of potash. The especial affinity of Kali mur. Is fibrin, and when no Kali mur. is at hand all the fibrin of the body begins to go stale. This makes it “a disturbing element” and the galled body naturally tries to throw it off. The result, at the one extreme, may be nothing worse than what we call a cold in the head. At the other extreme it may be diplitheria, asthma, pneumonia or dropsy.

So again with Cale. phos., or phosphate of lime, one of the most important of all the tissue salts. Its principal function, according to Prof. Carey, is to combine with albumin. When it is not present in sufficient quantity some of the albumin in the body has to go uncombined, and this uncombined albumin soon causes trouble. If the kidneys try to throw it off, it produces the condition vulgarly known as Bright’s disease. If, on the other hand, the skin tries to get rid of it, “it breaks down the tissue of the epidermis, or, in other words, eats a small section of the skin and thus escapes.” Such a condition, says Prof. Carey, “is called eczema, a word derived from a Greek word [meaning] ‘to boil out’.” And if the blood takes a hand in the scavenging, even worse trouble ensues, for “the circulation is increased, and the motion, being changed to heat by the law of conservation of energy, causes the symptom called fever. (See article on typhoid fever).”

Prof. Carey is very positive as to the medical value of these tissue salts, but sometimes his theory as to their precise function does not go much beyond the hypothetical stage. For example, there is Cale. fluor., or common fluorspar, an important constituent of the enamel of the teeth, and of “the elastic fibre of all muscular tissue.” What does it do? In Prof. Carey’s opinion, it “unites with albumin and forms, i. e., creates, elastic fibre.” Let the supply of it fall off, and at once the elastic fibre goes to pot. When this happens “in connective tissue between the cerebrum and cerebellum, an abnormal process of thought occurs, causing groundless fears of financial ruin.” When it happens elsewhere, it causes “varicose veins and a general sagging- down feeling.” And still elsewhere it causes bone felons, chapped lips and “enlargement of the throat.”

The cause of typhoid fever, if I understand Prof. Carey aright, is to be found in “certain atmospheric and electrical conditions.” These conditions “tend to weaken the plastic fibres of the skin and connective tissue, and thereby close the pores,” and the result is the accumulation of “dead cells in the body * * * in the arecolar membrane.”

Nature, in her effort to eliminate the accumulation of decaying organic matter, increases the circulation, and the increased motion produces heat. Science may call the heat fever, but heat will do just as well.

But how to reduce this heat? Obviously, by setting the pores to work again. And how to set them to work? By the use of Ferr. phos., of course. Ferr. phos. is a two-headed remedy, for it not only stimulates the pores to their neglected business, but it also tends to quiet the galloping heart, and so to reduce the heat of the body. Thus:

When a deficiency in this cell-salt occurs, the circulation is increased, for the blood tries to carry enough oxygen to all the organs of the body with the limited amount of iron at hand, and in order to do so must move rapidly; exactly as seven men must move faster in order to accomplish as much work as ten moving at a slower pace. This increased motion being changed to heat, is called fever. Search all the medical writings from Hippocrates to Koch, and you will not find so good and true a definition of fever as the one offered by the biochemic pathology.

These are only a few of the great discoveries and achievements of biochemistry, as described by Prof. Carey. Many others of equal wonder and majesty are set forth in his racy and revolutionary book. For instance, the discovery that malaria and cholera are caused by “an oversupply of water in the blood, caused by an atmosphere heavily charged with water.” For instance, the news that the germ theory of disease is all rot and buncombe and “has drove (sic) men and women insane.” For instance, the theory that measles is caused by a “deficiency in potassium chloride,” which produces an excess of “fibrinous, albuminous material in the blood, which is promptly rushed to the skin, where it “engorges the pores and glands and produces the popular (sic) rose-bud rash.”

Space forbids a longer review of this epoch-making work. It is an effective and embarrassing answer to the Oslers and Welches. It should be in every New Thought household. It is more valuable than “Science and Health” and more fascinating than “Ben-Hur.”