THE METABOLIC OR COMBUSTION ELEMENTS
While the four basic elements discussed compose the energy spending organic combustion material, we now pass to four other elements which to a certain extent represent the combustion apparatus in this burning process in vertebrate organisms, phosphorus, sulphur, iron and iodine. They can be designated as combustion elements in contradistinction to the organic basic elements. I know of nothing better to employ for an example than the match with wood as the burning material, phosphorus and sulphur as easily inflammable acceptors of oxygen which is made available by potassium chlorate. Phosphorus and sulphur are also biologic intermediator; the carrier of oxygen in the vertebrate organism is iron. And the regulator of this combustion system- in the match the release of the necessary warmth is brought about by rubbing- is represented in the animal organism by iodine.
In contradistinction to the crude example from daily life, the biologic combustion mechanism proceeds entirely on an interlocking and fine harmony through complicated chemical circuits so that for this process a labile dynamic equilibrium is also maintained. Therefore no extreme temperatures need appear. Of the interlocking of enzymatic and nervous regulation we need not speak in this connection. The sulphur containing building stone appears in all proteins down to peptones and protamines, and phosphorus in nucleoproteins and many lipoids. Iron and iodine fulfill their tasks in special organic compounds (hemin and thyroxin). There must be ascribed to each of these four materials a special physiologic rule in metabolism. Because of the manner in which they normally regulate organic chemistry, we also recognize their paths of disturbance in metabolism. And as always we are forced to a general supposition of an artificial regulations: that the disturbance circle of a material also shows orderliness; a supposition which is expressed in physiologic materials as follows; the medicinal action of a substance natural to the body presumes a disarrangement in the physiologic functions and paths of this material. When we repeatedly enter into the possibility of medicinal action of these physiologic materials, then it is always seen that these irregularities or regulations are in no way dependent on quantitative proportions, on excess or defect, but that the local and temporal siftings and the state of alteration are just as significant.
The four metabolic substances which we designate as combustion elements have entirely different functions in the preparation of the cells for oxygen in take and in the intermediation for oxygen itself, but common to them is the fact that they are originally and basically involved in dissimulation. They influence the body constitution from the metabolic side and here the relation to oxygen and to oxidation is decisive. The position of these four metabolic elements in the periodic system of element is certainly not inappropriate for their task. We see sulphur, phosphorus and iodine as anion formers, as representatives of Groups V, VI, VII, and iron which may vary between cation and anion building, as the representative of the accessory Group VIII, the heavy metals which serve in the special capacity of a catalysor.
THE TONIC ELEMENTS
On the other side of the periodic system, in Groups I and II, we find again four physiologic elements, sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium, with an entirely different function. We designate them as tension elements, as tonic elements. These four substances also have a common labor. As builders of cations they work together in order to guarantee the state of organic material, as structures on which the living processes play. As they are physiologic, that is, destined for the maintenance of labile equilibrium powers, their electrochemical and electrophysical reactions are reversible to a high degree, while the cations of higher (for example 3) valence and higher atomic weight have few or no reversible actions. Through their positive charges the four physiologic cations are the counterbalance to the anions (HCO3, HPO4, SO4) which are constantly arising from metabolism and which moreover through another anion, chloride, are held in equilibrium and regulated. The tonic work of the cations represents the limit, because tension depends upon limit. The relation of differentiated organic materials to their milieu, for the most part water, underlies the regulation through the electrolytes in general. And this is brought about in that they owe the electric discharge of atoms or atom complices to ions by separation by water. Their reciprocal relation to water makes it possible to create tensions and to balance them. And of the electrolytes the anions necessarily furnished in the course of life, in turn, are dependent upon other types of intermediary processes giving their counterbalances, the cation, the independent, indeed, the controlling role in the regulation of tension in and on the cells. The action of the charged ions proceeds on the surface of the body colloids. Colloids ar proteins or better said the organic structures are in a colloidal state as proteins, and, in consequence to the size of their molecules, not in a true solution in water. But thereby the relation of a colloid to water is decisive for its maintenance in a colloidal state. Colloids can incorporate and bind (hydration) water in their molecular complex; they can swell or shrink remarkably and owe their stability chiefly to their adaptability to their milieu, especially to water. One calls them lyophile or, since the swelling agent is generally water, hydrophile colloids. Hydrophobe colloids, on the other hand, maintaining their molecular complexes in a colloidal state independently of water, owe their stability to strong electric charges. We will encounter them especially in the metals, which in finest subdivision (high dispersion) with a distributing medium (dispergen) furnish the so-called metal sols. In the organism the hydrophobe colloids are rare (cholesterin, etc.). They are precipitated by ions of opposite charge (Hardy’s rule). Indeed the hydrophile colloids also carry an electric charge but the relation to water is decisive for the state of aggregation whether as fluids or sols semi-fluid or ‘gels, or as solids, coagulated. But the electrolytes act on the hydrophile colloids through loading or unloading, they influence the state of swelling and the surface tension. Now since most of the hydrophile colloids of the organism have a negative charge so the carriers of a positive charge, the cations, come to have an important role in influencing the colloidal cellular constituents. The actions of these physiologic cations can be best read off from the state of swelling and tension of the organic structure. Na, K, Mg, Ca, are the elements which primarily control the constitution of organic structure, indeed the organism, from the structural side and thereby is the relation of organic materials (proteins and lipoids) to water of special significance. One can also designate these tension elements as form-determining elements.
ION ANTAGONISM
Within this common labor again each of the four cations has its special task. This becomes gradually and partly accessible to our knowledge through the alterations in colloids, cells, or organs, which we observe in one-sided disturbances of ion equilibrium. One must avoid rash generalizing on the equal or opposing relation of ions from single effects on the total way of action of these ions. This is frequently noted in regard to the cations and thereby much error has entered this scientific field. This holds especially for the apparent general antagonism of potassium and calcium, which is paralleled by the antagonism of the vagus and sympathetic. We shall see later that this hypothesis is not sufficiently justified. Indeed we will observe opposing effects many times within cation interrelationship entirely synergistic, whereas, when two cations as potassium and calcium or magnesium and calcium neutralize the effect of each, this is characteristic only for the usual effect. On this account one should not speak universally of antagonism. Closely related ions which follow as chemical elements in allied groups, as potassium and sodium, magnesium and calcium may appear as exactly similarly working agents for many purposes, but in respect to other actions their effects are not additive but subtractive and they seem then to be antidotal.
For this there is a simple physical and chemical example: cations as Na, K, Ca each increase by themselves the surface tension of lecithin solutions. But if sodium and potassium or sodium and calcium are employed at the same time in definite proportions, then the surface tension of lecithin remains unchanged (Neuschloss). Another example: cane sugar splitting through invertase becomes prolonged as much when one employs a magnesium salt as when he adds a calcium salt by itself; indeed the calcium salt acts stronger than the magnesium salt. But if one adds the two at the same time and in the same concentration, the one completely removes the depressing influence of the other.
Leeser, a Consultant Physician at the Stuttgart Homeopathic Hospital and a member of the German Central Society of Homeopathic Physicians, fled Germany in 1933 after being expelled by the German Medical Association. In England Otto Leeser joined the staff of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. He returned to Germany in the 1950s to run the Robert Bosch Homeopathic Hospital in Stuttgart, but died shortly after.
Otto Leeser wrote Textbook of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Leesers Lehrbuch der Homöopathie, Actionsand Medicinal use of Snake Venoms, Solanaceae, The Contribution of Homeopathy to the Development of Medicine, Homeopathy and chemotherapy, and many articles submitted to The British Homeopathic Journal,