7. It is essential to promote the secretion and flow of saliva and bile.
8. It promotes appetite by rendering the food more palatable.
The first three of the above propositions constitute what may be styled the prescriptive or old-fashioned argument. The next four, grouped together, are the chemical theory of the value of salt, and are of more recent origin. The last, though seldom advanced as a scientific reason, partakes of the character of science as well as of tradition.
In regard to No. 1, let us see how far it is borne out. To destroy logically the value of the proposition it would only be necessary to establish the case of a single individual who does not and has not used salt—raw salt—in his food. The universality, that which it rests upon, would then be broken. We ought not to be content with that, however. I think it would not be difficult to show that there are whole nations and tribes of people who do not eat salt. I am told by an Italian, who has lived among them, that the Algerians do not. I was myself informed, while in that region, that the Indian tribes inhabiting the banks of the Columbia River and Puget Sound do not. It is noteworthy also that those tribes are among the most peaceful, intelligent and industrious tribes in North America, and are of fine personal appearance. I think there is little doubt that the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific Ocean lived from a period of vast antiquity, until their discovery by Europeans, without putting salt crystals on their food. It has continually happened that hunters, tourists, soldiers and explorers have been left for weeks, months and years without a supply of salt, by accident or otherwise, and have survived without apparent injury. Finally, there are many persons in the United States who have voluntarily abandoned the use of salt for periods ranging from one to twenty years (and for aught I know longer), not only without injury but with increased health, strength and activity. So far from being natural to man, the instincts of children, especially when born free from an inherited bias in its favour, go to show by their rejection of it that it is unnatural. Like the taste for coffee, tea and various seasonings, it is an acquired one. Few if any children do not prefer unsalted food.
It should not be overlooked that the manufacture and distribution of salt as an article of commerce is a thing of history, and has attained its enormous dimensions within the past century and a half. It is inconceivable that in past times the population of the world, made up as it was largely of pastoral and nomadic people inhabiting the interior of the great continents, should have supplied themselves with salt as an ingredient of food, as we do. The omission of any mention of it in the older chronicles and even among the more perfect records of the classics, except at the luxurious tables of the rich, goes to confirm this supposition.
Propositions Nos. 2 and 3 are of the same character, and have a like origin. It is discouraging to discover how little thorough sifting of beliefs there is among mankind—especially concerning matters of such primary importance as their daily diet—a neglect for which their hair-splitting casuistry on topics of faith and morals in no way atones. The foundation of the notion that men die when deprived of salt (and the inference therefrom that it is because of it), so far as I have been able to trace it, rests on an experience related in the older works on physiology, and copied with childlike confidence into the later ones, to the effect that, more than one hundred years ago, during the wars waged by England on the Continent, several thousand British soldiers, being shut up as prisoners of war in the low countries—at the Hague, I believe—and after an incarceration of many months, all died of disease, induced, it is stated, by being deprived of salt! The same cry, it will be remembered, has been charged to modern nations in more recent wars, and notably during the American Civil War, when the mortality was so great in the southern prisons. It needs no great natural acumen nor book learning to discover that there are other and far more potent disease-inducing causes at work to account for the dreadful mortality—even in these days of superior civilisation and greater humanity. Observation satisfies me that inattention to ordinary sanitary precautions—partly incident to confinement and partly to the rooted superstition in the minds of those who had charge of them, that disease is a something to be fought out with specific medicines after it has appeared, rather than prevented from making its appearance—will abundantly reconcile the facts, if they be facts; and in this I am confirmed by a comparison of the appalling ratio of mortality recorded in some of the most famed of London and Paris hospitals, where gangrene and fevers alone did their deadly work, in spite of the attentions of doctors, without appreciable aid from those inevitable attendants of war-prisons—homesickness, filth and bad diet. Such evidence as this would hardly be received in a trial for larceny; and yet it is solemnly repeated generation after generation by those who should be teachers of teachers.
The third proposition, in regard to the wild and domestic animals, is, like the preceding, not formidable when examined. I have diligently inquired of old hunters and pioneers for confirmation of the story that deer and buffalo are in the habit of visiting regularly the salt springs or “licks,” in order to eat the salt. I have not been able to find one who has ever seen the licking process himself. There is reason to believe that hunters do take their positions at certain brine-springs to find their game, and that the deer at certain seasons of the year resort to them—precisely why is not determined. Nothing of the kind is now claimed of the buffalo; that is a tradition. But suppose it were all true, as claimed, does that justify man in sprinkling the solid residue of the brine on his food? Is there not here too lofty a structure upon too slight a foundation? It is notorious that all the salt springs hold in solution (sometimes found encrusted on their sides) large amounts of lime, sulphur, iron, and commonly other ingredients.
The very purest of our table salts of commerce contain from 2 to 4 per cent. of the sulphate of lime, after they are supposed to have been purified and larger amounts of it removed. May it not be that at certain seasons, as in the winter when the herbage is covered by snow, or during pregnancy, when the fœtus requires it, the deer (or buffalo, if you will) repair to these spots instinctively for that which nature denies them at the time? We know that cows on a scant pasture, at such times, will chew and partly dissolve an old bone; yet it would be equally reasonable to put ground bones on our food as an inference from this trait; indeed, more so, as the latter is an admitted fact of everyday occurrence, while the other is somewhat in doubt; and besides the economy of lime in the system is patent.
In regard to domestic animals we are on more solid ground; only it is constantly necessary to remember that we are dealing with creatures domesticated and subdued in some degree to the will of man. It is a common notion that salt is necessary to the well-being, if not the preservation, of horses and horned cattle. It is, I am persuaded, a great mistake. In the first place, although it is undoubtedly true that some domestic cattle will eat salt, and follow impatiently to get it, it is not true of wild cattle. I am assured by many of the great herders in Texas, Colorado and California, that the native cattle are not fed salt, never see it, and will not eat it if offered. Of course it is a transparent absurdity that salt could be hauled hundreds of miles to feed these great inland herds; and it is not done, as is supposed. They derive salt enough from the grass of the plains to supply nature’s demand, if any there be. This, if it furnishes any analogy at all, points to the food itself as the true source of supply for the human species.
But in regard to the craving of horses and cows kept within fences, enclosures and buildings, it is susceptible of proof, and has been proved many times, that it is an artificial and not a natural appetite. I have seen both horses and cows which will not eat salt if offered to them. The parents, when the supply was cut off, did not suffer perceptibly, and in a short time unlearned the habit. Neither the old ones nor their progeny will touch it now. I have not space here to enter into the question of the great injury done to the health, and consequently to the wholesomeness of the flesh of both improved and native or Texas varieties of cattle, by the pernicious practice of thrusting salt into their food, while preparing for, or on the way to, market, in order that the weight may be increased. It is worth the while of the State to institute an inquiry to see if this be not one of the provoking causes of the cattle diseases, and rinderpests of America and Europe.