Access to all articles, new health classes, discounts in our store, and more!
Health Starts in Soil: Doctor Albrecht Describes Relationship Between Soil, Plant, Animal Life
Published in Herald of Health, December 1958
* * *
The relationship between healthy soil and healthy human bodies was graphically illustrated by Dr. William E. Albrecht, chairman of the Department of Soils, College of Agriculture, University of Missouri, during the Ohio National Health Federation convention.
A foremost authority on soil, plant and animal life, Dr. Albrecht presented statistics pointing up the fact that the still-fertile areas of the United States produce healthier people than in the farmed-out, mineral-deficient areas, particularly the south. The percentage of rejects for military service coincided with soil fertility, he revealed.
“Imbalance or deficiency is a cause of disfunction and disease in plants,” he said, “and the same principle holds with humans. Twenty-three per cent of our children are being born with defects. Fifty-three per cent of our hospitals house mentally deficient people. During World War 2, 158 men per 1,000 were rejected because of physical defects. The human health pattern follows the same trend as the plant health pattern.
“The stream of life will not flow in spite of us. Man has lived with the belief he could rule nature, now he is learning he must go back to nature and observe her laws or perish. We have taken for granted that we could pillage and exploit the land. Now we are realizing that we must put back what we take out or reap the penalty in unbalanced, weak plant-life which in turn causes physical deficiencies in animal and human life. We depend on each other.
“If we start with creation as a handful of dust, we don’t start with much bulk. Five per cent of the body is ash. Without personality or spirit, we would be only inorganic substance.
“To get back to the beginning, we must start with rock which is breaking down through action of heat, cold, sun, moisture. A good share of it goes to the sea. A good share is clay, and when feed is planted, the root contacts the clay which in turn must be restocked because it absorbs acid from plants.
“The building of a crop is the ecological climax of nature. Before man came along to mine the soil, nature kept the necessary balances. The seed decayed and made carbonic acid. This was mixed with the disintegrating rock. Nature put back what was taken out by the grasses. Weeds were eliminated because the nutritional balance was maintained by the death of the preceding crop. Plant-life is no exception to basic law. It is as temperamental in retaining balance as is the human body. At best, the human body is at one level. When we torment it, it must drop to a lower level.
“All life form struggles to keep tissues. The plant can use carbohydrate and is able to take. nitrogen from the atmosphere or soil, combining them into a carbo-chain and making protein, amino acids.
Dr. William E. Albrecht of University of Missouri, internationally-known authority on the relationship between soil and human health, drives home a point during address before Ohio National Health Federation convention.
“Every form of life uses a quantity of protein made up of the required amino acids. Plants can make carbohydrate easily. Protein can grow by adding more life unto itself. When foreign protein moves into your body, the reserve protein-potential must be present in the body to take it over, or it will take you over.”
Dr. Albrecht said more Americans suffer from sterility than from the six major degenerative diseases.
“When we say the seed is running out, we mean the stream of protein-carrying life has been halted through deficiency or imbalance,” he continued.
He displayed slides documenting his thesis that nature’s law demands balance, and showing how depletion of nitrogen results in protein-deficient plant life.
“When nature feeds her crop, organic matter goes back totally,” he declared.
“In healthy soil, the temperature is 10 degrees cooler than in depleted soil in July.”
As fertilizer, he recommended a solution of calcium and lime, saturated to 70 per cent of calcium, with 7 to 10 per cent of magnesium added.
“The plant can’t take calcium from rock, it must be in soluble form,” he said. “By building up an exchangeable form of calcium-magnesium to available form, we can have it in reserve. The root respires carbon dioxide.”
Dr. Albrecht said a study of 38 different crops revealed that in the west the supply of potash, lime and phosphorus measured 5.14 per cent; in the mid-west, 3.94 percent; and in the south, 1.97 per cent.
“Eastern U. S. soils are low in calcium and there is a problem in growing protein-producing plants,” he continued. “To make grass, we must have rock breaking down and clay to hold it. The protein-potential makes beef. Which raises the question, does the soil make the cattle, or the cattle the soil? Does the soil make the grass, or the grass the soil? Does the soil make the people, or the people the soil?
“In our agriculture we’ve emphasized the gain in bulk–more tons or bushels per acre–but not the creation of protein-producing capacity. Protein in Kansas wheat is down to 14% as compared with 18% in 1940. (Ed. note: A similar experience is under study with sugar beets in California). Fungus disease is prevented by a proper quantity of calcium and nitrogen combined as protein.
“When we fail to provide the balances demanded by nature, we pay a penalty,” he emphasized. “Imbalance begets imbalance. When we tamper with nature, we reap a tampered effect. Dr. Pottenger buried the dung of cats fed on cooked milk, cats which were not reproducing, incidentally–and also the dung of cats fed with raw milk. These pictures indicate that the uncooked milk, retaining its original elements, returned them to the soil and they produced a big weed crop. The pasteurized milk, on the other hand, became sterile, and the soil in which the dung was buried produced only a handful of weeds.”