SALT AND ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL USES. 5G5 



II. 



There is, then, a weli-established relation between a vegetable diet 

 and the need for salt and recipi'ocally between an animal diet and the 

 exclusion of this article from food. We must now push tho matter 

 further and ask the reason for these remarkable relations. This is the 

 probhnn formulated by G. Bunge, who, as a chemist, has advanced a 

 very ingenious theory for its solution. 



The answer might be very easy. If, for example, the difference 

 between the two diets was that of a difference in the amount of salt 

 which tlu\y respectively contained; if the food of vegetable origin was 

 poor in common salt and that of animal origin rich in that substance, 

 the solution Avould ))e clear; the law empirically established by Bunge 

 would have a very evident explanation. 



But the matter is not so simple. The two kinds of diet are not distin- 

 guished from each other by the quantity of salt which they contri))ut(> 

 to the organism. In fact, both kinds are very poor in salt. 



If we examine food as it comes from plants or animals we hnd that 

 the greater part of it is tasteless and insipid, insufficiently salted for 

 our taste. The albuminoids of meat, the fats, the starch of cereals and 

 leguminous plants, do not, l)y themselves alone, exercise any action 

 upon our gustative sense. The flavor of our food comes from second- 

 ary products, from aromatics and odors that are added in some w^ay; 

 to be exact, from foreign substan(!es existing in very minute quan- 

 tities, ethers, acids, and essential oils that culinary preparation and 

 cooking only develop to a greater degree. In general, natural food is 

 but slightly saline. 



Since the small ([uantity of common salt contained in natural aliments 

 suffices for our needs when the diet is conffned to animal food, it ought 

 to answer for them in the case of a vegetal )le diet. Why is it other- 

 wise? Whence comes it that one of these methods of alimentation 

 requires the artificial addition of salt^ Chemists have ascrilx'd the 

 cause of this peculiarity to the different composition of the two kinds 

 of food. Although ))oth contain equally small (luantities of chloride 

 of sodium, they are distinguished from each other by another mineral 

 product which they possess in an unequal though considera))le degree. 

 This is potash. In marked contrast with common salt, this sul)stance, 

 "I I ways abundant, varies very greatly in its relative quantity in different 

 \inds of food. There are foods that contain a great deal of it, and 

 these are precisely those that are taken from the vegetable kingdom, 

 i'lants are generally distinguished by their richness in potassic salts. 

 They accunudate (Miormous (juantities of them, drawing them fi'om the 

 poorest soils. Indeed, before the discovery of the mines of Stassfurt, 

 the incineration of green plants was the only source of industrial pot- 

 ash. Inversely, there are other aliments derived from animals that 



