Abstract
AGRONOMISTS and agricultural chemists in practice condone statements about applying a given weight ‘of P2O5’; the only certainty then is that phosphorus pentoxide was not used, though a reader may infer that an unspecified phosphate is meant, either alone or mixed with much calcium sulphate. Statements, common in physiological literature, about treating a patient or a tissue with ‘potassium’ or ‘Mg++’ are little more exact or informative for a research student or historian; nor are terms like ‘ion-balance’, or discussions of ‘ions’, when restricted to cations. Phenomena observed in solutions of complex salts are commonly attributed to ‘effects of pH’; series of solutions ‘adjusted to various pH-values’, ‘lacking NO3’, ‘having extra Na’, etc., are taken to be comparable, except for what is thought to be a single ionic variable.
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Nicol, Hugh, Commun. Third Fertil. World Cong. (Heidelberg, 1957); Fertil. Feed. Stuffs J., 46, 557 (1957).
Macallum, A. B., Physiol. Rev., 6, 316 (1926).
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NICOL, H. ‘Total’ Ionic Consideration of Aqueous Systems in Biology. Nature 193, 379 (1962). https://doi.org/10.1038/193379a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/193379a0
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