Introduction to Bread Prom Stones - Dr. Julius Hensel
by Dr. Raymond Bernard (A.B., M.N., Ph.D.)
From Bread From Stones: A New and Rational System of Land Fertilization and Physical Regeneration
by Dr. Julius Hensel (Agricultural Chemist).
Translated from the German (1894).
Dr. Julius Hensel was the greatest figure in the history of agricultural chemistry even if his powerful enemies, members of the octopus chemical fertilizer trust, have succeeded in suppressing his memory, destroying his books and getting his Stone Meal fertilizer off the market. But eventually the truth comes to the fore, and its enemies are vanquished. Julius Hensel's pioneer work in opposing the use of chemicals in agriculture, a half a century later, found rebirth in the Organic Movement which has swept through the world. But Hensel is more modern than the most modern agricultural reformer, for he claimed, on the basis of theoretical chemical considerations, and supported by practical tests, that his Stone Meal can replace not only chemical fertilizers but all animal ones as well.
It was the German agricultural chemist Liebig who first put forward the phosphorus-potash-nitrogen theory of chemical fertilization. This false doctrine Hensel bitterly attacked and in so doing, won the ire of the financial interests behind the sale of chemical fertilizers, which used agricultural authorities and university professors to denounce poor Hensel as a charlatan and his Stone Meal as worthless.
Though his fight against chemical fertilizers was a losing battle and he died as a defeated hero, it took a generation for Hensel's efforts to bear fruit in the modern Organic Movement, which has not given its founder the credit due him.
The fight between Liebig, advocate [of] one-sided chemical fertilization, and Hensel, who advocated a more balanced form of plant nutrition, including the trace minerals which Liebig completely overlooked, was a battle between an opportunist, who sought to further the sales of chemical fertilizers, and a true scientist, interested in humanity's welfare.
Though Liebig, with the Chemical Trust behind him, won the battle, Hensel's ideas finally triumphed... several decades after his passing.
Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries -