In this sense it has ever been my strenuous endeavor to fathom the secret of the inception of constitutional diseases; but the entire medical literature did not advance me further than pathological anatomy, which informs us that the original cause of disease is a change in the form of the cellular elements of different digestive organs,—­in explanation of which the customary technical terms are used, such as “atrophy,” “degeneration,” “metamorphosis,” etc.  But, I reasoned with myself, this surely cannot be seriously regarded as the origin of disease!

The cause of the visible changing of the cellules must be sought in the conditional interstitial substances which cause the invisible changes or shiftings of the cellular forms, and which are scientifically termed “Changed nutritional conditions.”

By the aid of physiological chemistry I was successful in finding a pathway to the centre of those mysterious occurrences of life.

And this was my course of reasoning:  As the cellules, which are the smallest individual elements of the human system, are only products of the blood, and for their composition require the different chemical substances in sufficient quantities, it is obviously necessary to fathom what those chemical elements of the cellules may be, what form they take in their mutual relation to the separate parts of the body, and in what way they enter the organism.

In this manner I obtained a clear insight into the actions of the so-called mineral material in the organism, and it gradually became obvious to me that everything is dependent upon the introduction of the proper sanguifying or nutritive mineral salts into the blood.

On this basis I founded the so-called “organic nutritive cell-food therapy” (called the Dech-Manna therapy).

The point may be raised that the elements of the food we eat or drink are heterogeneous and that the mineral matter in them is naturally and casually acquired, according to the properties of the soil they grow in.  This is the general opinion, but not the fact.  Our vegetables, grain, meat and milk contain too much phosphoric acid and sal ammoniac, and this is due to the use of artificial and animal fertilizers, while the sulphurics are very often entirely missing.

Von Liebig says:  When we consider that the sugar refineries of Waghausel have an annual output in the market of 600,000 lbs. of potassic salt, which is taken from the soil by the turnips of the Baden fields without being replaced, and that there is cultivated in Northern Germany, year by year, with the assistance of guano, an immense amount of potatoes solely for the manufacture of spirits, and that these potato fields are consequently robbed of the essential ingredients which potatoes should contain, and as these elements are only partially replaced by the insufficient component parts of the guano, we cannot be in doubt as to the condition of these fields.  The ground may be ever so rich in ingredients, but it is exhaustible.  The analysis of our blood indicates that, in order to remain healthy, it must contain twice as many sulphuric as phosphoric salts.