SALT AND ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL USES. 569 



This is the conclusion of the greater number of physiologists. It 

 is that of M. Lapicque, who sees, in the appetite for salt, a particular 

 case of a very general taste for condiments common to all populations 

 that live on vegetables: To the Abyssinians, who counteract with 

 berberi, a sauce spiced with pimento, the insipidity of their durrha or 

 Indian millet; to the Hindoos and Malays, who mask with curry the 

 tastelessness of rice, the basis of their diet. This is also the opinion, 

 of far greater antiquity, of Sallust, who, speaking of the salt dis- 

 dained by the Numidians, ranks it among the alia irritamenta gulae. 



In reality, one may reconcile these opinions and bring Bunge into 

 agreement with Sallust and M. Lapicque. The sole function of con- 

 diments is not that of rendering agreeable the enforced task of eating 

 and of transferring into a pleasure the necessity for food. The 

 gustatory sensation is not wholly for the pleasure it gives ; it is 

 charged with an important function relating to the operations of the 

 digestive apparatus. As Professor Pawlow and his pupils have 

 recently shown, it starts into action the vital energy of the stomach 

 and induces the secretion of an efficient gastric juice, rich both in 

 acid and in ferment (pepsin). Even the contact of the food with the 

 mucous membrane of the stomach, which physiologists have until 

 recently supposed to be the only means of arousing the secretion of 

 that organ, does not have as much effect as the sensory excitation due 

 to sapid substances. The gustatory impression is more efficacious. 

 It causes a more abundant secretion of gastric juice, which is more 

 energetic in its action and therefore of greater value. 



Condiments and seasonings are therefore found to have a justifica- 

 tion that is to some degree of a physiological character. They insure 

 the proper action of the stomach. 



Salt does more. At the same time that it puts in motion the secretion 

 of the stomach it furnishes it with materials, at least with some of 

 them. Hydrochloric acid, which is characteristic of the gastric juice 

 and insures its digestive efficacy, is derived from salt, from the chloride 

 of sodium of the blood. The same origin should be ascribed to the 

 chlorine compounds found in the juices of the stomach, fixed chlorides 

 and organic chlorine. In other terms the material for the chlorine 

 compounds of the gastric juice comes primitively from the salt of our 

 food. 



This is not the place to discuss how, in order to produce this result, 

 the salt of the blood is decomposed within the gastric glands. This 

 is a problem that has greatly occupied modern physiological chemists, 

 and upon which they as yet do not fully agree. Maby has supposed 

 one kind of mechani.Mii for this reaction, Laudwehr another. The 

 method matters little. That which should lie noted is the fact that 

 salt is destroyed by gastric digestion, and that the equilibrium of the 

 organism demands that it be replaced. If, then, the loss of salt is not. 



