SALT AND ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL USES. 



By M. A. Dastre. 



Salt is a universal commodity. It seems to have been used almost 

 without exception in all places, times, and civilizations. To-day it 

 seasons the wretched meal of the Soudan negro and the carefully 

 selected repast of a European table. We tind the same predilection 

 for its use as far back in history as we can go. The Jews offered it to 

 Jehovah with the first fruits of the harvest and the fruits of the earth; 

 Homer calls it divine and chronicles its use in the repasts of his 

 heroes; Tacitus tells of furious wars between the Germanic tribes for 

 the possession of salt springs near their territories. 



Indeed, men have recoiled before no hardship, no sacrifice, and no 

 danger to procure this precious substance. They have sought to 

 obtain it by war, by fraud, by the fatigue of long journeys. Some 

 very primitive peoples have been remarkably ingenious in methods of 

 procuring it for their own use; for example, the aborigines of the 

 Sunda Islands have inv^ented rude chemical processes for extracting it 

 from the mud about their mangrove trees. Mungo Park saw the 

 inhabitants of the coast of Sierra Leone give all that they possessed, 

 even their wives and children, to obtain it. It is, in fact, an object 

 of so general consumption, so necessar}' to man, that it affords an 

 assured medium of exchange, and that is what is meant when we say 

 that salt has been used and is still used for money. This is true for 

 the different countries in central Africa. It was the same in ancient 

 times, and, since the Roman soldier received in his ration salt as well 

 as oil, meat, and cheese, his compensation took the name of salary^ a 

 name extended later to all stipulated wage for material work. 



The need, the hunger for salt is not confined to man. Many 

 animals seek this sul)stance with avidity. Buft'on wrote: "Nothing 

 pleases the appetite of sheep more than salt." Barrall, Boussingault, 

 and Desaive have informed us that cattle ma}' suffer cruelh' from a 



"Translated and condensed from the Revue des Deux Mondes for 1901, Vol. I, 

 pp. 197-227. 



SM 1901 36 561 



