Eisen-Suppressed-Inventions-and-other-Discoveries-True-Stories-of ...

228 Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries
Liebig, with the Chemical Trust behind him, won the battle, Hensel's
ideas finally triumphed . . . several decades after his passing.
Liebig claimed that plants require three main elements—nitrogen,
phosphorus and potash—the basis of which conception chemical fertilizers
were manufactured that supplied these elements. On the other hand,
Hensel claimed that plants need many more than these three major elements,
stressing the importance of the trace minerals, which at that time
were ignored. In place of chemical fertilizers, supplying only three elements
in an unnatural, caustic form, Hensel recommended the bland minerals
of pulverized rocks, especially granite, a primordial rock which contains
the many trace minerals that meet all needs of plant nutrition.
Hensel first made his discovery of powdered rock fertilization when he
was a miller. One day, while milling grain, he noticed that some stones
were mixed with it and [he] ground [them] into a meal. He sprinkled this
stone meal over the soil of his garden and was surprised to note how the
vegetables took on a new, more vigorous growth. This led him to repeat
the experiment by grinding more stones and applying the stone meal to
fruit trees. Much to his surprise, apple trees that formerly bore wormy,
imperfect fruit now produced fine quality fruit free from worms. Also
vegetables fertilized by stone meal were free from insect pests and diseases.
It seemed to be a complete plant food, which produced fine vegetables
even in the poorest soil.
Encouraged by these results, Hensel put his "Stone Meal" on the market,
and wrote extensively on its superiority over chemical fertilizers,
while at the same time opposing the use of animal manure, and the nitrogen
theory on which it is based, claiming that when plants are supplied
with Stone Meal, plenty of water, air and sunshine, they will grow healthfully
even if the soil is poor in nitrogen, since it was his belief that plants
derive their nitrogen through their leaves, and do not depend on the soil
for this element.
In opposing this use of chemical fertilizer, Hensel awoke the ire of a
powerful enemy, which was resolved to liquidate him—the Chemical
Trust. Through unfair competition, Hensel's "Stone Meal" business was
destroyed and his product was taken off the market. However, the chief
object of attack was his book, Bread From Stones, in which he expounded
his new doctrines of Liebig on which the chemical fertilizer business
was based, as well as the "Liebig meat extract." (For Hensel advocated
vegetarianism, just as he advocated natural farming without chemicals or
manure.) Accordingly, his enemies succeeded in suppressing the further
publication of this book and in removing it from libraries, until it became
extremely rare and difficult to obtain. It is more fortunate that a surviving
copy came into the writer's possession.