The history of salt

by Evan Marlett Boddy

Whenever the blood is impoverished we may be tolerably certain that salt is, in a greater or lesser degree, absent, or below the standard, and that it is variable.

Now in scrofula the blood is not only vitiated, but poor in the extreme, and there is a decrease of the fibrine; and that being the case, the constitution suffers in proportion, the affection showing itself in various ways, which unmistakably indicate the adynamic state of that fluid which permeates the whole frame.

Scrofula and her twin sister struma, for there is a difference, are low forms of chronic inflammatory cachexia, and are never entirely recovered from. We may justly term them systemic diseases originating local morbid phenomena, and which are always liable to give rise to obscure attacks of an apparently serious nature, but which are considerably modified if the treatment be simply hygienic, judicious, and practical; scrofula is always tedious and prolonged, and therefore, as I have said before, we must not anticipate that because salt is of a nature somewhat antidotal to it and its attendant evils, that its effects are to be observable instantaneously, or that any very remarkable results must necessarily be obtained. It is the reverse; the effects are slow in the extreme, but the benefit is permanent—that is, if the treatment adopted be calculated to restore to the blood that constituent so necessary for health.

This is easily explained—the unhealthiness of the system arising from mal-nutrition, owing to the blood being more or less deficient of a constituent which is necessary for the promotion of health, and being solely constitutional, it takes some time to make up for that deficiency, and to supply that which is lost. A disease of long standing, and of an hereditary character, is not speedily recovered from, particularly if the mischief is caused by, or is dependent upon, an impure state of the blood, and if there is not the normal amount of the chloride of sodium it must of necessity be corrupt.

Though salted provisions are apt to produce scurvy if continued for too long a time, yet in the case of those on board ship I do not think it arises exclusively from the salt itself, but by the unwholesome food upon which the toilers of the sea are obliged too often to subsist. The biscuits, which are of the coarsest kind, and sometimes worm-eaten, are certainly not calculated to keep up the stamina of the men; and the salt pork which they have three or four times a week is not exactly the food to promote a healthy condition of the blood; neither is the soup, which is little better than rice water, capable of even satisfying the cravings of hunger.

Besides, there is a very miserable custom, and which tends to ruin the health of our sailors, and that is the drink which is, I may say, encouraged on board ship, and officially served out to them daily, in the shape of rum, though of late they can have cocoa if they prefer. So habituated have they become to this that no captain would think of suggesting a diminution of the supply. Our sailors, poor fellows! will stand anything but the deprivation of their “grog;” they do not mind being crowded like beasts of burden in a close, stifling forecastle, eating coarse biscuits or unwholesome pickled pork, so long as they are duly supplied with their “grog” and allowed to go “ashore” and spend their contemptible pittance on poisonous compounds which burn their stomachs and sow the seeds of some deadly disease, and especially if they happen to be in the tropics.

All these inseparable accompaniments of nautical life are, without doubt, provocative of scurvy to a certain extent, and I am sure do not help to stave it off. If rum is taken on an empty stomach, day after day, as regularly as clockwork, we cannot expect that the men should be in a state of sound health, or that their blood should be pure; particularly if the voyage is long, the biscuits worm-eaten, the pickled pork of a questionable condition, sometimes even approaching putridity, and the rice-soup—upon which I shall abstain from passing any remarks, further than by saying that it is decidedly not of that quality tending to act as a substantial sustentation of men who work hard, and who are exposed to all weathers, both by night and by day. Indeed it is surprising that they can perform their duties as they do when we call to mind their irregularities, their daily use of spirits, and their periodical alcoholic indulgences when ashore, combined with their abominable diet on board ship.

Though salted provisions solely are not altogether conducive to health, or contributive towards preserving the due equalisation of the constituents of the blood, I cannot see that they entirely originate scurvy, as some assert; I am of an opinion that this disease is caused principally by seamen’s peculiar habits, and the surroundings belonging to a seafaring life, joined, much more frequently than some would like to confess, with the ingestion of animal food just rescued from putrescence by a timely immersion in brine.

Everything, as is well known, can be used and abused, and salt, like other natural productions, owing to human avarice, can be put to a purpose so as to derange and render nugatory the laws of health. We know full well that salt completely arrests the formation of putrescent larvæ in meat, if it is rubbed in when fresh, or if it is well soaked in strong brine; and if the meat is bordering on decomposition, we may prevent it proceeding to a more advanced stage by immersing it in brine; still it is not in a condition fit for human consumption. Such food in my opinion is of a nature calculated to produce disease of a most virulent type; indeed it is quite sufficient to produce the worse form of scurvy, let alone the outbreaks of a milder degree.

I am acquainted with the fact that a diet consisting exclusively of salt pork and salt beef, with very little variation or change, would be, if continued for any length of time, combined with the absence of fresh vegetables, productive of much mischief, and in the end no doubt scurvy would be the result; but for us to assert that every outbreak of this disease is produced by salted provisions, is to run into a very ridiculous error, and we fall into a trap cunningly laid for us by those whose interest it is to keep up this preposterous imposition in the eyes of the not too discerning public. If shipowners took more care in provisioning their ships with wholesome food, instead of allowing them to be stored with bad pork, putrid beef, and rotten biscuits, we should not read the heart-sickening accounts so frequently in the newspapers. It is all very well for them to assert that the disease springs from salt, and the absence of vegetable food; it is to their interest to say so. We can cast their flimsy statements to the winds, however, and give them an emphatic contradiction, for their proceedings in this matter will not bear even a partial investigation.