Pliny, in his day, at the beginning of the Christian era, records it as the common belief that salt is foremost among human remedies for disease, and among preventives of sickness of all kinds.[47] He gives prominence to salt as a cure of leprosy,[48] whereas blood transfusion and blood bathing was the traditional treatment of that disorder.[49] Pliny also speaks of salt itself, and of salt fish in large quantities, as a supposed remedy for the bite of serpents,[50] this being in the line of asserted remedies among the Indians, according to Dr. Stevens. Various other disorders, especially of the blood, are named by Pliny as curable by salt.
Seventy years after the treatise of Dr. Stevens, a volume, recently published in London by C. Godfrey Gümpel on "Common Salt,"[51] claims even more than Pliny, or any writer since his day, for "the vital importance of common salt for our whole physical and social life." He claims that of all the constituents of our life's blood "there is none which can possibly surpass common salt in its necessity for a strong healthy blood,"[52] and that both the red corpuscles and the white are largely dependent for their normal condition on "the presence of common salt in the system."[53]
A writer in the Asiatic Quarterly Review, not long ago declared that the government salt monopoly of the British Empire in India (since practically abolished, or modified) was a cause of greater evils than those resulting from either opium or alcohol. This claim is based on the idea that a lack of salt by the common people of India tends to a deterioration of blood and consequent loss of life. Asiatic cholera is said to be promoted by the lack of salt in the blood. Men and cattle alike are said to be sufferers from this cause, and the soil is rendered less fertile. Whether this idea is well grounded is a minor matter; that the idea has been in many minds is not to be questioned.
Thus it will be seen that in the primitive mind salt and blood have seemed to have common properties, and to be in a sense interchangeable, while the more careful observers in the world of science have rather grown toward this thought than away from it. Be it correct or incorrect, the human mind has never been able to rid itself of the idea.
Salt is sometimes used in the rite of blood brotherhood among primitive peoples, as is also wine, both wine and salt being counted the equivalent of blood, and the original and the substitute being sometimes employed together as if to intensify the symbolism. Stanley tells of the use of salt in this rite on the occasion of its performance with Ngalyema in the Congo region.[54] And so again in other cases.[55]
It is a common practice in the East to welcome an honored guest to one's house by sacrificing an animal at the doorway, and letting its blood pour out on the threshold, to be stepped over by the guest, as a mode of adoption, or of covenant-making.[56] When such a guest comes unexpectedly, and there is not time to obtain an animal for the welcoming sacrifice, it is customary to take salt and strew it in lieu of blood on the threshold,—salt being thus recognized as the equivalent, or as a representative, of blood.[57]
The measure of love and honor accorded to the welcomed guest is indicated by the cost or preciousness of the sacrifice on the threshold. There are traditions, at least, of the sacrifice of a son of the host in this way. Again a favorite horse has been thus sacrificed. More frequently it is a lamb that is the sacrifice. If there is no lamb available, a fowl or a pigeon is thus offered. The essential factor in every case is the blood, the life, outpoured. If, however, no actual blood is obtainable, salt, as representing blood, is accepted as indicating the love and the spirit which prompts the welcome, according to the giver's means. There could hardly be a fuller proof of the identity of salt and blood in the primitive mind.
When a Siamese student was asked by the writer whether the rite of blood-covenanting was known in his land, he replied: "There is no 'blood covenant' so far as I know. The custom is, if two persons are desirous to become firm friends or brothers they drink together salted water; then each takes an oath." He also suggested that he had heard that in former times they drank a fowl's blood in this rite.