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900 METABOLISM.
substances by man as very small. It may, however, be assumed that
man usually takes with his food a considerable excess of mineral sub-
stances.
Experiments to determine the results of an insufficient supply of
mineral substances with the food in animals have been made by several
investigators, especially Fcrster. He observed, on experimenting with
dogs and pigeons with food as poor as possible in mineral substances,
that a very suggestive disturbance of the functions of the organs, par-
ticularly the muscles and the nervous system, appeared, and that death
resulted in a short time, earlier in fact than in complete starvation. On
observations made upon himself, Taylor l
found on partaking less than
0.1 gram salts per diem that the chief disturbance occurred in the mus-
cular system.
Bunge in opposition to these observations of Forster’s has suggested
that the early death of these cases was not caused by the lack of mineral
salts, but more likely by the lack of bases necessary to neutralize the sul-
phuric acid formed in the combustion of the proteins in the organism;
these bases must then be taken from the tissues. In accordance with
this view, Bunge and Lunin 2
also found, in experimenting with mice,
that animals which received nearly ash-free food with the addition of
sodium carbonate were kept alive twice as long as those which had the
same food without the sodium carbonate. Special experiments also
show that the carbonate cannot be replaced by an equivalent amount of
sodium chloride, and that to all appearances it acts by combining with
the acids formed in the body. The addition of alkali carbonate to the
otherwise nearly ash-free food may indeed delay death, but cannot pre-
vent it, and even in the presence of the necessary amount of. bases death
results from lack of mineral substances in the food.
With an insufficient supply of chlorides with the food the elimination
of chlorine by the urine decreases constantly, and at last it may stop
entirely, while the tissues still persistently retain the chlorides. It has
already been stated (Chapter VIII) how chloride starvation influences
other functions, especially the secretion of gastric juice. If there be a
lack of sodium as compared with potassium, or if there be an excess of
potassium compounds in any other form than KC1, the potassium com-
binations are replaced in the organism by NaCl, so that new potassium
and sodium compounds are produced which are voided with the urine.
The organism becomes poorer in NaCl, which therefore must be taken
in greater amounts from the outside (Bunge). This occurs continuously
1
University of California Publications, Pathol., 1.
2
Bunge, Lehrbuch der physiol. Chem., 4. Aufl., 97; Lunin, Zeitschr. f. physiol.
Chem., 5.
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