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SALT. 127 
in water, and, in the process of dissolving, emits 
a gas of similar composition to carburetted hy- 
drogen. The coloured varieties owe their col- 
our to the presence of animalcules; and even 
the clear kind, as well as the red, contains a 
monad, which may readily be seen by placing a 
few particles of the salt with a little water on 
the object-glass of a microscope, and observing 
the residue after the salt is melted. 
The Uses of Salt in the Arts.—Salt is the most 
commonly used of all antiseptics for the preserv- 
ing of meat. See the section “ Salting of Meat” 
in the article Meat. It is also employed in 
large quantity for the manufacture of bleaching- 
powder, hydrochloric acid, and the best carbon- 
ate of soda. “In preparing hydrochloric acid 
from salt, which is done by the aid of the oil of 
vitriol, sulphate of soda is formed, from which, 
by heating it with charcoal, carbonate of soda is 
obtained. Thus, in the very important manu- 
facture of soda from salt, both the chlorine and 
the sodium are made use of, the hydrochloric 
acid being but a secondary product, formed in 
the first stage of the manufacture of carbonate 
of soda, a product nearly equal in importance to 
the oil of vitriol, by means of which it is made.” 
The Uses of Salt to Animals—Salt, in small 
quantities, and in accompaniment with food, is 
highly relished by man and by almost all quad- 
rupeds, whether domesticated or wild; and acts 
at once as a condiment, for giving agreeable sa- 
pidity to food,—as a tonic, for assisting the pro- 
cess of digestion,—as an aliment, for contribut- 
ing certain principles to the blood and some of 
the liquid secretions,—and as a medicine, both 
to prevent some diseases in a healthy system, 
and to aid or effect the cure of others in a mor- 
bid one. It renders many articles of food grate- 
- ful, both raw and prepared ones, which would 
otherwise be nauseous; it produces a heat, a 
stimulation, and a gentle causticity in the 
stomach and the small intestines, which always 
assist digestion, and are often essential to it; it 
contributes the free hydrochloric acid of the gas- 
tric juice, the soda of the bile and the blood, 
and the soda salts of some other animal fluids ; 
and it prevents worms in man and rot in sheep, 
and putrefactive tendencies in all animals who 
use it, and operates as an useful aperient and a 
mild restorative under various forms of both 
acute and chronic disease. The efficacy of it 
against parasitical worms in man will sufficiently 
illustrate its general value. “A lady is spoken 
of in the London Medical Journal who had a na- 
tural antipathy to salt, and was consequently 
most dreadfully infested with worms during the 
whole of her life. In Ireland, where, from the 
bad quality of the food, the lower classes are 
greatly infested with them, a draught of salt 
and water is a popular and efficacious cure. Dr. 
Paris has noticed the bad effects of a diet of un- 
salted fish. Rush says that he has administered 
many pounds of common salt with great success 
in worm cases. Lord Somerville, in his address 
to the Board of Agriculture, gave an interesting 
account of the effects of a punishment which for- 
merly existed in Holland. ‘The ancient laws of 
that country ordained criminals to be kept on 
bread alone, unmixed with salt, as the severest 
punishment that could be inflicted upon them in 
their moist climate. The effect was horrible; 
these wretched criminals are said to have been 
devoured by worms engendered in their own 
stomachs.’ The wholesomeness and digestibility of 
our bread are undoubtedly much promoted by the 
addition of salt which it so universally receives. 
Dr. Dyer says, that in the Mauritius, the plant- 
ers’ slaves rarely obtain salt, and are therefore 
extremely subject to worms, while the govern- 
ment slaves and the convicts get salt in their 
rations, and seldom suffer from those intestinal 
parasites. Some planters, regarding economy 
and the health of their slaves at the same time, 
give a table-spoonful of salt in half a pint of 
water to each slave regularly every Saturday 
after work; and they find that this dose acts not 
only as a vermifuge, but as a tonic.” 
The uses of salt, whether condimentally or 
medicinally, for all kinds of live stock, are quite 
as extensive and varied as the uses of it for man, 
and in many respects are the same, but in others 
are different. It gives sapidity and relish to 
grasses, hay, and other kinds of raw food ; it acts 
universally as a stimulus to digestion; it renders 
coarse food more nourishing, and moist food less 
injurious; it restores the tone of the stomach 
when impaired by excess of either food or la- 
bour, and often recals the appetite more speedily | 
than any other tonic; it preserves health, and 
improves the general condition; it isa purgative 
second only to Epsom salt when given in the first 
instance, and acts with high certainty when pre- 
ceded by a dose of Epsom salt which fails to purge, 
but, in consequence of its being a tonic as well 
as an aperient, it is unsuitable in an early stage 
of any fever; it acts with great power and gene- 
ral efficiency as a vermifuge; it serves, in exter- 
nal application, as an excellent discutient, a 
hardener of sore places, and an abater of inflam- 
mation ; it improves the quality of excrement 
for the purposes of manure; and it so greatly 
tames the disposition, and overcomes natural 
timidity, that sheep gather round a shepherd to 
receive distributions of it, and the wildest cattle 
come to lick it out of the hand. In all its inter- 
nal uses, however, whether as a condiment or as 
a medicine, it requires to be administered in 
small and measured quantity ; for whenever it is 
given too freely, it not only does no good, but 
may produce very serious evil. 
Salt is of great use to horses. It makes them 
relish their food, and incites them to work well, and 
assists their general health and condition, and is 
a preventive or a cure of bots and grease. A 
quantity of about four ounces in the day, sprinkled 
in several doses of about a table-spoonful each 
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