SALT DESTROYS PARASITES. 
iir 
best resisted the snows of Russia? Lorrains and Franche-Comtois, 
children of the salt country. What sailors buffet it longest on the 
sea ? The Bretons of the salt marshes. To what country be- 
longed those federated giants, whose superb stature so vividly ex- 
cited the admiration of the Parisian ladies in the fine days of ’90 ? 
From Jura, country of salt. What are now the most enlight- 
ened, most laborious, and least quarrelsome countries of France? 
The salt countries, Franche Comte and Lorraine. (The Breton 
indeed cannot read, but he has few lawsuits.) In what industry 
has been first introduced the vivifying principle of Association ? 
In that of the Gruyere cheese, a salted product. Salt, which 
crystallizes in cubes, is the emblem of wealth, of salubrity, of 
preservation ; it preserves to man his acquired riches, his fish, his 
meats ; as sugar his fruits. Salt, scattered over arid soils, moistens, 
fertilizes them, and develops a vigorous vegetation. 
Salt excites the appetite of man, and preserves him in health. 
It causes the skin of the beast to shine, and makes it fatten quicker. 
Deprive man of salt, condemn him to eat unsalted meat, and soon 
you will see myriads of worms develop themselves in his intestines, 
and in all parts of his body — tape- worms, lumbrici, etc. — emblems 
of parasitism. His hair and body will be covered with vermin — 
emblem of misery and degradation. I wager that children have 
their reason for loving salt so well. The Abyssinians, who eat 
much meat, and who have no salt, are constantly afliicted with 
worms, and with tape-worms.^ I have read somewhere that in 
certain northern countries, the interdiction of salt was a punish- 
* With a vegetable and fruit diet, there is perhaps no longer the same 
inconvenience from the disuse of salt. Among a communist colony, at 
Skeneateles, New York, a number of persons lived for two years on this 
very simple diet, disusing also tea, coffee, and stimulants of every sort, 
both solid and fluid. I am assured by one of their number, that during 
that time the general tone of health was superior, and the efficiency in la- 
bor very fair. I have also heard of prize cattle, in Ohio, reared without 
salt, so that it is still an open question, whether conditions healthy in other 
respects may not permit us to dispense with salt. Our Indians are report- 
ed to have made scarcely any use of salt until they learned the habit from 
the whites, and Prescott narrates the same of one of the finest indigenous 
tribes of the interior of Mexico. — T r. 
