Epsom salts

“ Their taste is bitter and unpleasant. So little are they affected by exposure to the air, that the Abbé Haüy kept some by him for more than twelve years without any sensible alteration.
These salts are much used in medicine, and are sometimes manufactured from the waters of Epsom (290) and Sedlitz (289) , but more frequently, and in much greater abundance, from sea-water.
The magnesia of the shops is prepared by dissolving Epsom salts in water, and adding to the solution half their weight of potash (205) . The substance that sinks to the bottom is magnesia ”

“ Art. XVI. Analysis of the Harrodsburg Salts.
Art. XVI. Analysis of the Harrodsburg Salts, by Edward D. Smith, M. D. Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in the South-Carolina College.
More than a year since I received a quantity of a white earthy substance, which was said to be obtained by the evaporation of certain mineral waters at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, and there vended at a considerable price, under the name of Epsom salts. The respectable character who presented this powder to me, requested that I would make an analysis of it ”

“ Scholars on the foundation must be the sons of medical men, but in other respects the school is open. In the neighbourhood is the Durdans, a seat of the earl of Rosebery.
EPSOM SALTS, heptohydrated magnesium sulphate, MgSO4·7H2O, the magnesii sulphas of pharmacy (Ger. Bittersalz) . It occurs dissolved in sea water and in most mineral waters, especially in those at Epsom (from which place it takes its name) , Seidlitz, Saidschutz and Pullna. It also occurs in nature in fibrous excrescences, constituting the mineral epsomite or hair-salt ”

“ Take an ounce of oxalic acid, dissolve it in a pint of soft water, and keep it in a bottle well corked; dip a soft sponge into the mixture to clean the tops with, and if there are any spots which refuse to disappear, rub them with a little fine Bath brick dust: sponge the tops afterwards with clean water. Take particular care always to have any mixtures, or powders for boot-tops, labelled with the word poison in large letters, as fatal accidents have arisen from oxalic acid, being so like Epsom salts in appearance, as to be often taken for them in mistake. ”

“ Epsom salt is frequently the last remnant of sea-salts left in the soil after reclamation. Though probably somewhat more injurious to plant growth than Glauber’s salt, the mineral Kieserite, one of the Stassfurt salts and consisting essentially of Epsom salt, is sometimes used as an application to calcareous lands instead of gypsum, and with good results. Yet gypsum is usually the safer, and equally effective.
Borax (bi-borate of soda) occurs much more rarely than the salts just described; most frequently in certain portions of California, forming part of the “alkali” in the soil. ”

“ Epsom salt, as it commonly occurs, contains muriate of magnesia, which disposes it to deliquesce, but lately this salt has appeared in the market in a state of great purity and beauty; the mode of purification is founded upon the well known chemical law, that a saturated solution of one salt is still capable of dissolving another; in the present instance, therefore, the impure crystals are washed in a saturated solution of the same sulphate, which, although unable to act upon its kindred salt, can dissolve with facility the muriate, and any other saline contamination. ”

“ I confess, however, that I am induced to regard this process as rather chemically ingenious than as medicinally useful, for the usual saline impurities of Epsom salt are not only harmless, but capable of increasing its purgative powers; the double refined sulphate is certainly less efficient as a cathartic. The presence of the muriate may be at once detected by dropping upon the suspected sample some sulphuric acid, by which the disengagement of muriatic acid vapour will be produced. ”

“ As sodium chloride, or common table salt, it is taken in great quantities by most people. Those who have no salt get along well without it, which shows that it is not needed in large amounts. If but a little is added to the food, it does no perceptible harm, but when sprinkled on everything that is eaten, from watermelons to meat, it is without doubt harmful. By soaking foods, they are deprived of much of their soda: The two sodium salts that are very abundant are sodium chloride, or common salt, and sodium carbonate, generally called soda. ”

“ SALTPETRE The attention of the ancients was naturally attracted by the efflorescences which form on certain stones, on walls, and in caves and cellars; and the Hindus and nomad Arabs must have noticed the deflagration of at least one of them when a fire was lit on it. These efflorescences consist of various salts,—sulphate and carbonate of soda, chloride of sodium, saltpetre, &c.—but they are so similar in appearance and taste, the only two criteria known in primitive times,19 that early observers succeeded in discriminating only one of them, common salt, from the rest. ”

“ Common salt constitutes the mineral halite, the composition of which is sodium chloride. It is rarely found perfectly pure in nature, but is commonly mixed with other saline materials, such as gypsum and anhydrite, and occasionally with salts of potassium and magnesium. The general grade of rock-salt deposits, where not admixed with clay, is perhaps 96 to 99 per cent of sodium chloride. ”

“ To the first assertion I shall only reply, that every person at all conversant in chemistry knows that Magnesia earth is the same, from whatever substance it can be separated in a pure state; that the factitious Epsom salt yields it in as great a degree of purity as the salt of the Epsom water, and that Dr. Alston assures us, the artificial salt "by various and repeated experiments, made in France as well as in Britain, is demonstrated to be every way as good as, yea to be the very same with, the genuine made of the Epsom waters." ”

“ Salt-petre is separated from the brine which first affords it, or from the water with which it is washed out of nitrous earths, by the process commonly used in crystallizing salts. In this process the brine is gradually diminished, and at length reduced to a small quantity of an unctuous bitter saline liquor, affording no more salt-petre by evaporation; but, if urged with a brisk fire, drying up into a confused mass which attracts water strongly, and becomes fluid again when exposed to the open air. ”

“ While salt is essential, it is contained as an element in many foods, and there is no more reason why it should be sprinkled upon each and every article of food that is taken than we should have castors containing all the other kinds of inorganic salts, that the system needs, and which are supplied to it in fresh foods. Salt using is merely a habit, and a disastrous one, since it has been shown to be one of the factors in the causation of kidney troubles, such as Bright’s disease. ”

“ Fortunately, chemists have lately paid attention to the advantages of the use of pure salt in various industries, with the result that at least two chemically pure products are now available. The use of these salts should be general for the cure of hides and skins, as they are quite dry, and, therefore, easily spread. As a curing agent, they are much more effective and lasting than common salt. ”

“ The Essential or Universal salt of Vegetables, Animals, & Minerals, is indeed in its own nature nitrous, but it does not conceive any flame afore it has attracted life and flame from the Air. Further, one salt attracts that Life sooner and willinglier than another does, according as it is by Nature framed. By how much the more volatile and urinous the salts are, so much the sooner do they change themselves into Nitre; and by how much the more biting and more corrosive, so much the more difficultly and slowly do they put on the nature of Salt-petre. ”

“ Of course, the sodium chloride in the flesh of the herbivora and frugivora is obtained from the vegetable matter forming their food, and very few of them have the opportunity of obtaining it from salt-licks and mineral sources. They must have the power of storing up the sodium chloride from plants in sufficient quantity, whilst the potash salts pass away. There is no justification for saying that they are worse off by being deprived of salt. If the ape tribe can thrive without added salt why should not man? Bunge considers that a restriction to vegetable food causes a great desire for salt. ”

“ Magnesia, from being insoluble, or nearly so, in water, is all but tasteless, and has barely any alkaline reaction, yet it is a very strong alkaline base; 20.7 parts of it neutralize as much sulphuric acid as 47 of potash. A salt is not always a crystallizable substance, and vice versa. The progress of our chemical knowledge has therefore demanded a wider extension and application of the term salt, and it is not now confined merely to a combination of an acid and an alkali, but is conferred even on compounds consisting only of sulphur and a metal, which are termed sulphur salts. ”

“ From this till the 20th, I gave him sundry medicines, but with little more effect than to ease him now and then: for the complaints always returned again in different manners and at uncertain times: but nothing extraordinary happened.
On the 20th, I gave him a dose of Epsom salt, which he had been used to take: it purged very well; but, immediately on its leaving off to work, his body struck out with great numbers of small red spots, without other inconvenience except a little extraordinary heat in the skin. ”

“ Small blocks of transparent salt of a deep sapphire blue are occasionally found in the Wieliezka mines. The colour disappears on heating, and when the salt is ground to powder. It is attributed by some chemists to the presence of subchloride of sodium, by others to the presence of thin cavities having parallel surfaces with gas inclusions.
Common salt, which is classed as “sweet” to distinguish it from the bitter-tasting salts of magnesium, has a peculiar saline taste which gains in pungency with refinement, and in its pure state is odourless. ”

“ The usual addition of common salt (sodium-chloride) to boiled potatoes is no proper substitute for the loss of their natural saline constituents. Natural and properly cooked foods are so rich in sodium chloride and other salts that the addition of common salt is unnecessary. An excess of the latter excites thirst and spoils the natural flavour of the food. It is the custom, especially in restaurants, to add a large quantity of salt to pulse, savoury food, potatoes and soups. Bakers' brown bread is usually very salt, and sometimes white is also. ”

“ These earths are nearly insoluble in the vitriolic acid, and what part does unite with it, forms a selenitical salt, the most difficult of solution of all others, and of an astringent nature: whereas the Magnesia [d] united with the same acid, produces what is commonly called Epsom salt, easy of solution, and purgative to the bowels. The former, with the nitrous acid constitutes a calcareous nitre, incapable of crystallization; with the marine acid a calcareous muriatic salt ”

“ It is much better to have a teakettle lined with earthy matters than to have such a lining in our arteries.
The excessive use of table salt is another cause of early aging. It is a good preservative and pickles meat very well. People have long used salt as a preservative and perhaps they got the salt-eating habit in this way, first using it on the foods to be preserved, and then on nearly all foods. Salts to excess, especially table salt, help to mummify or pickle those who partake of them too liberally. The addition of sodium chloride to foods is unnecessary. ”

“ Now, of course, it is true that anyone who knows the principle of the nomenclature of salts, to which, we suppose, Hugh Miller refers, can tell a good deal about a [Pg 182] salt from the name of it, say, nitrate of potassium, KNO3, but it would be impossible to invent a systematic nomenclature of which this would not be true. ”

“ Saltpetre added to brine gives the meat a red colour, and brown sugar improves the flavour.
The sooner animal substances, more especially flesh, are salted after being killed, the better, as they then possess considerable absorbent power, which they gradually lose by age. See Putrefaction, Scurvy, Smoking, &c.
SALTPE′TRE. Nitrate of potassium.
SALTS for producing Factitious Mineral Waters. Aerated, or Carbonate Waters. These require the aid of the powerful machine employed by soda-water manufacturers, to charge the waters strongly with carbonic-acid gas. ”

“ The last product, though somewhat impure and deliquescent from the magnesian salt it contains, is preferred for salting fish on account of its property of attracting moisture. The mother liquors are run off to be treated for the other salts. From the salting tables the crystallized salt is taken and made up into pyramidal heaps, and during the summer season these are left exposed to the weather. The little rain that falls promotes the purification of the salt by removing the more soluble foreign matters. Nothing more is done to prepare the salt for the market. ”

“ SALTS Of all salts found in the body, the most abundant and valuable is sodium chloride (NaCl) , common salt; it exists in all tissues, secretions, and fluids of the body, with the exception of enamel of the teeth. The amount found in food is not always sufficient; therefore salt is used as a condiment. It assists digestion, inasmuch as it furnishes chlorine for hydrochloric acid found in gastric juice. ”