The Fifth Seminar or Trace Element Clinic 1949

The clinic-seminar in Springfield, Missouri, on April 10-11, 1949, dealing with trace elements in nutrition has brought many inquiries. Perhaps you would appreciate a short report.

This clinic-seminar was the fifth one in a series of demonstrations and discussions to help us look at the soil in our nutrition; to get us to think a little deeper. On the farm, when we really think through its agriculture, all our thinking will lead to consider the soil fertility. That is the foundation of agricultural creation. When we think our troubles through, we shall see the soil as the possible origin of nutritional deficiencies, not commonly traced that far. If we do trace them to the soil, the prevention of the troubles will be simple through ministrations to the soil with fertility elements or simple compounds and not to the animals and humans with medicines. We must learn to look to the soil for our health; we must get that three times a day off the dinner plate with a knife and fork. This clinic-seminar had the testimony of people and of dairy cattle to tell us that the soil is the means of proving the old saying that “To be properly fed is to be healthy.”

Some twenty patients, being fed trace elements, volunteered to tell their case histories to the doctors around the consulting table. There were five doctors, including one in dentistry.

Records of the-blood tests of nineteen, afflicted with Brucellosis, were presented, showing them originally positive reactors to the agglutination test for Brucella infection, but now completely negative after trace element therapy. The time period required to bring that change about varied from six to twenty-five months, apparently, required to arrive at the negative reaction, built by the body mechanisms needed to resist the virus or the microbe. The ages of these recovering folks varied from seventeen to sixty-five years, with the majority of them in their forties.

As for the dairy cows and their testimony about trace element deficiencies coming as failing health by way of the soil, two farms are under observation and tests. More farms are added to the list for study. On one the cows are still being given trace elements as supplements in their feed. Others are treated via trace elements applied to the soils and coming via the crops.

The results in the improved health of the cows, the restored high milk output, the higher rate of conception and delivery of calves are already telling us that trace element deficiencies in the soil must be considered as cause of the poor health; and offer the possibilities of remedy by the trace elements fed via the soil as the required therapy to eliminate what is called “disease.” On another farm, the soil treatments, including all the essential fertility elements that soil-testing and even suspicion suggest as considered deficiencies, have been applied, namely, calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc, nitrogen, phosphorus, and others, as contaminants, have been applied to the soil.

There the better health of the cows is again the testimony. There is no more foot-rot, almost no milk-fever, the hair and skin are clean, glossy and softly pliable, and regular conception results with no more than two services by the bull or artificial insemination. The calf crop is of one-hundred percent, or with no abortions, and above all more-milk regularly with the farmer-owner rather than the veterinarian looking after those cows for what they can’t look after themselves, are the interesting features about the farm. ln the minds of the Nichalsons, several generations put together, the dairy business in southwestern Missouri is not yet going to the dogs. It is carrying those several families forward with optimism.