The tendency in the human mind—the more so with the untrained intellect—to find the class of facts it is seeking for, and to overlook or ignore the class which makes against its preconceived notion or desire, is always to be guarded against. It is a little singular that the advocates of the salt habit should have selected the one or two species of wild animals, and the two or three allied species or varieties under domestication which do or can be made to eat salt, while the vastly greater number of both classes of animals which do not and cannot be made to, are overlooked. True enough, a hungry cow will eat what is called “salt hay,” whereon the brine from the sea has crystallised, but invariably the same cow will turn from it to good well-cured meadow hay. Hunger is a terrible temptation, hence many of our animals (and the same is true of children) acquire their taste for salt by its mixture with their food; and a reprehensible practice has begun of mixing salt, or lime, with the new hay in the stack in order to “cure” it—that is, to prevent its decay by excess of moisture—on the theory that the hay is improved thereby. Surely no argument can properly be drawn from appetites so engendered. On the same principle might we sprinkle sawdust with a horse’s oats, because, if kept up, he will gnaw away the boards within reach. For this, by the way, there are good physiological reasons.
Look, however, at the other side of the argument as drawn from the lower animals. How numerous are they by whom salt is rejected or to whom it is hurtful? The whole of the birds avoid salt. It is fatal to chickens and tame birds, as every housewife knows. Indeed, there is strong ground for supposing that much of what is called “chicken cholera,” “gapes,” and the like, is in part due to the presence of salt—not always in minute quantities—in the food taken from the table. Wild birds have no such epidemic diseases affecting the mucous linings of their organs. It is also fatal to the hog, that foulest and hardiest of omnivora, which, out of some stress of famine, or from its peculiar prolificacy, men have been led to dwell with and propagate as a food supply. I believe it is well ascertained that when hogs get a moderate amount of brine, or pickled salt meat, it is impossible to save them. To vary the phrase a little: that which will make a hog sick cannot, prima facie, be good food for his owner. Of all the range of wild animals, clean or unclean, it is yet to be shown that a single one eats salt voluntarily as food. Why should man be the exception?
It is further claimed that salt is a necessary constituent of the diet, for the reason that, when the body is examined, post-mortem, a certain amount of salt is found therein. From this it is argued that salt is therefore necessary to the human body! It is queer logic. Were opium or nicotine found in the body of the dead man, would it be argued that therefore opium or nicotine were necessary to the body in health? Yet the argument is just as logical, and the conclusion just as warranted.
All that can be urged, logically, is that salt is a necessary article of diet; and that, no one would deny. Certainly I would not. But I must insist that this salt can be supplied to the body in its organic form—just as any other salt can. It is contained in fruits and vegetables, together with other salts: why not eat it in that way, just as we eat those other salts? To be sure, we need common salt, just as we need iron, and potash, and sulphur, and lime, and other mineral salts; but no one thinks of sprinkling lime and potash and iron filings over his food, just the same! There is no more reason why we should sprinkle sodium chloride, or common salt, over our food, than there is why we should sprinkle any of these other salts. Both are equally mineral elements: both are inorganic substances; and hence both are equally unusable by the system. Salt can have no more effect upon the economy than iron filings can; and there is no more reason for taking the one into the system in this crude form than there is for taking the other. Only habit and prejudice sustain the custom.
It is urged, again, that salt preserves the waste of the tissues, and that animals, fed upon salt, become fat. There is but little evidence for this; but I shall grant its truth, for the sake of argument. Granting it to be true, what then?
We know that the antiseptic property of salt, its affinity for moisture, makes it valuable in the arts for some purposes, among which, of course, are conspicuous the preservation of dead animal meats. We see its effect in the beef or pork barrel, or on dried fish. It hardens and keeps dry the fibrous tissue so that oxygen enough cannot be reached to oxidate and break down the tissue by what is known as decomposition. If the salt were all withdrawn by solutions of water (whatever might be the effect on the meat itself) there would ensue no harm in its use in preserving food. Notoriously it is not done, and even greater is the necessity for removing the nitrate of potash with which the curing is assisted.
Is not the action of the salt in the system on the effete or dying tissues the same, in kind, as upon those in the brine barrel? I see nothing in the vital economy to negative the presumption. The particles of dead and oxidised tissue on their way out of the body, so far as they are brought within the influence of the salt—and this, as it floats in solution all over the body with the blood, must be general—are robbed of their moisture, dried, hardened, pickled, and their passage along the finer canals made more difficult. They lodge and remain, and hence account, in part, for the increased weight of the body. The added weight represents in part filth which ought to be outside of the body, not inside.
Many other objections might be urged to the use of salt, in this place; but space forbids. When anyone examines the evidence carefully and impartially, he will find that there is not one solitary argument in favour of the habit that will stand the test of criticism; while there are many arguments, on the contrary, which conclusively prove it to be injurious and unphysiological. The single argument, based upon the undoubted fact that many hundreds of people in the United States and elsewhere, have totally abandoned salt, and have not depreciated themselves in consequence, but have on the contrary, improved their health and general physical condition, is proof in itself that salt-eating is a habit— is not necessary, but is, on the other hand, positively injurious. When we take these facts into consideration, we can come to no other conclusion but that salt-eating is a habit, pure and simple, which is not only unnecessary, but is exceedingly detrimental to the physical health of the individual who continually eats it.
Pepper is not, like salt, a mineral substance; it is a vegetable poison. Flies will not touch it, neither will they eat salt. Black pepper, if taken upon an empty stomach in the moderate quantity of a teaspoonful, will either be promptly ejected, or it will cause great disturbance in the stomach and bowels, and also in the heart’s action, after it enters the circulation. It is in no sense a food, but in every sense a stimulant, which is but another name for a substance non-usable by the vital organs, and therefore to be thrown out of the vital domain. Red or black pepper is a prolific cause, as are all stimulants, of enlargement of the blood vessels, and ultimately of disease of the heart. Its immediate effect upon the tongue, throat, stomach and bowels is to cause an increased action, not only of the capillaries, causing temporary congestion and even inflammation of the mucous surfaces, but also of the organs which secrete the digestive fluids. Its ultimate effect is to weaken and deaden these organs, by repeated stimulation, to abnormal action; it also impairs or destroys the organs of taste within the mouth, together with the gastric or other nerves which aid in the process of digestion. When these are weakened by stimulants, the functions themselves are necessarily impaired, and confirmed dyspepsia, with its attendant train of bad symptoms, brings up the rear.