562 SALT AND ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL USES. 



lack of salt, and that, on the other hand, tney thrive when it is added 

 to their ration.' 1 



Reindeer and red and roe deer love to lick the surface of brackish 

 puddles and saline efflorescences. In all climates, in all latitudes, wild 

 ruminants and other hoofed animals resort to salt licks, a circum- 

 stance of which hunters take advantage, choosing their shooting covers 

 either where salt naturally effloresces or where they themselves have 

 scattered it. 



A predilection so general and an appetite so imperative can not be 

 considered as mere accidents. They doubtless correspond to a natural 

 need of the system. Modern physiology has attempted to discover the 

 reason for their existence which must be profoundly based in the ani- 

 mal organization. It has asked why, among the mineral substances 

 that form a part of our food, some of which enter much more exten- 

 sively into the constitution of our tissues, common salt should be the 

 only one that man artificially adds to his natural aliment. The salts of 

 lime and the phosphate of soda, for example, which compose so large 

 a part of the skeleton or of the liquids of our economy, are not used 

 at all in cookery. If we sometimes use them in an isolated state it is 

 merely as medicines. What is the reason for this instinctive and 

 peculiar employment of common salt over and above the quantity 

 naturally contained in foods? This brings up the more general ques- 

 tion of the part which salt plays when once introduced into the organ 

 ism; of the physiological phenomena in which it participates; in a 

 word, of the evolution which it undergoes. * * * 



Salt was first used as an aliment at the time of transition from the 

 pastoral and nomadic stage to sedentary and agricultural life. The 

 Indo-European languages have no common word to designate salt, 

 nor have they any for tin 1 greater number of the objects that relate to 

 agriculture. But, on the other hand, they have common roots for all 

 words relating to pastoral occupations. We may see in this an indi- 

 cation that the primitive peoples from which our modern races sprang 

 were separated before they abandoned a pastoral life. They did not 

 learn the art of agriculture until later, and with it they learned the use 

 of salt. 



There are populations, ethnic groups, and castes that have never 

 adopted it. The Egyptian priests did not salt their food. Plutarch 

 was astonished at this strange disdain. Sallust says that the Numid- 

 ians did not care for salt: Neqm salem, neqm alia irritamenta guide 

 quaereha/nt. And in the same way we see around us, side by side with 



:i In practical agriculture it is generally admitted that there should be given to 

 each sheep about 2 to 5 grams of salt per day, :;o to 5Q grams to a horse, 60 to 100 

 grams to an ox. In England and in Germany stock raisers much exceed these 

 amounts. 



