Sal volatile

“ Pulverise and mix together equal parts of Sal Ammoniac and Salt of Tartar: put the mixture into a glass or stone cucurbit: pour on it good Spirit of Wine, till it rise half an inch above the matter. Mix the whole with a wooden spatula; apply a head and a receiver, and distil in a sand-bath, gently heated, for two or three hours. A Volatile Salt will rise into the head; and then the Spirit of Wine will distil into the receiver, carrying with it a portion of the Volatile Salt.
When nothing more will come over, let your vessels cool ”

“ The same Reason satisfies, why Tobacco that grows on low Lands as far as the Salts, tho' the Plant be never overflowed with Salt Water, yet the Ground that feeds the Plant being impregnated with Salt Water, that Tobacco Smoaks not pleasantly, and will scarcely keep Fire, but do all that a Man can, will oft go out, and gives much trouble in frequent lighting the Pipe, 'till after it has been kept some considerable time: Which may be assign'd to the fixeder Saline Particles of the Marine Salt in these Plants, which require more time e'er they be render'd Volatile. ”

“ 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. ”

“ N. B. That the operation of the Liquor doth always exceed the virtues of the salts. When the sharp spirits of salt are not mortified with a Lixivium of Tartar, but with the spirits of Urine or of Sal. Armoniack; the salt and liquor become far stronger, than when the precipitation is done with Salt of Tartar. For the spirit of Sal. Armoniack doth for the most part precipitate the dissolved and corrected Vermine into a Powder, which being washed off with common water, and freed from all Acrimony or sharpness is used in medicine, in a dry form. ”

“ OF what Nature then this Poison is we may conjecture from the Circumstances of its Production. All animal Bodies do more or less generate a Salt; or rather, in Proportion to the Strength of their digestive Powers, do they more or less subtilize the saline Particles which are taken in with their necessary Nourishment. This is abundantly manifest in the Distillation of many animal Substances, which plentifully yield a volatile Salt. ”

“ It is largely owing to its preservative property that common salt is an absolute necessity to the life of man and the higher animals, from a quarter to half an ounce a day being sufficient to prevent the putrefaction of food in the digestive tract in the case of an adult. In agriculture, salt is not only valuable as a destroyer of weeds and insect life, but used sparingly and with knowledge, it forms an excellent manure; while its more strictly chemical value in the manufacture of soda, chlorine, etc., causes it to play an important part in many branches of industry. ”

“ Varro relates of dwellers on the borders of the Rhine, who having neither sea nor pit salt, supply themselves by means of the saline cinders of burnt plants. Pliny speaks of ashes as impregnated with salts, and in particular of the nitrous ashes of burnt oak; adding, that these salts are used in medicine, and that a dose of lixivial ashes is an excellent remedy. Hippocrates, Celsus, Dioscorides, and especially Galen, often recommend the medical use of sal alcali. To the mixture of acids and alcali, Plato ascribed fermentation. ”

“ Mere desiccation, indeed, can hardly ever be employed upon flesh. Culinary salt is generally had recourse to, either alone or with the addition of saltpetre or sugar.
These alkaline salts abstract water in their solution, and, consequently, concentrate the aqueous solution of the albumen; whence, by converting the simple watery fluid into salt water, which is in general less favourable to the fermentation of animal matter than pure water, and by expelling the air, they counteract putridity. On this account, salted meat may be dried in the air much more speedily and safely than fresh meat. ”

“ THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SALT INDUSTRY Salt, being existent in all animal and vegetable life, is coeval with life itself; it was present in the first herbage which gave nourishment to the first beast that, in its turn, became food for the first omnivorous man. In the beginning, man consumed the saline essences that were required to preserve his body in health, in the form of sodium chloride, which he absorbed in the uncooked flesh of animals, birds, and fishes, and in raw green-foods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These salts, or compounds, are mingled with sawdust, or some other porous substance not acted on by the gas, before being put into the purifiers; and after they become saturated with the vapour, the newly-formed hydrochlorate or sulphate (according to the salt or mixture employed) is washed out of the mass with water.
Besides the usual sources of SAL AMMONIAC (and the other ammonia-salts of commerce) it has been proposed to obtain it from guano, peat, shale, &c., as noticed under Sesquicarbonate of Ammonia (suprà) ”

“ As a cooling and diaphoretic medicine, the sal ammoniac dissolved either in vinegar and water, or combined with small doses of the Peruvian bark, has often been attended with the best effects, when taken in fevers, and especially in intermittents, after the intestinal canal has been properly evacuated. Mr. C. Lynam, a medial practitioner in the metropolis, has formerly favoured the Editor of this work with an account of a cheap and expeditious manner of saturating the common solution obtained by dissolving this salt in vinegar, with fixed air, or carbonic acid gas ”

“ It originates in the food, and is, in a large measure, due to a want of salt in the grain. Hence, working-horses that are highly fed should have lumps of salt to lick, and have salt in their food, and plenty of water to drink. The ventilation and drainage of stables is another important consideration. Many valuable beasts, after a hard day's work, pass the night in an atmosphere loaded with fumes of ammonia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let it be clearly understood that all commercial salt is produced either from the sea or from rock-salt. Sea-water is evaporated to precipitate its salt either by the heat of the sun or by artificial heat. Rock-salt is mined and refined for market purposes, and it is resolved into brine from which the salt is extracted by solar heat or the process of boiling, but whether the salines are obtained from salt lakes or from natural brine springs, or are prepared by flooding salt deposits with water and pumping it out in the form of fully saturated brine, rock-salt is the foundation for them all. ”

“ Coarse salt scattered about wardrobes, closets, cupboards, etc., will keep moths and silver fish away. Any rooms where they are, should be swept with salt. It does not injure carpets, on the contrary it tends to brighten the colours, and is a great purifier removing stuffy and musty smells. ”

“ Take one pound of powder'd Sal Armoniack and about three Pints (or pounds) of Water, put the Salt into the Liquor, either altogether, if your design be to produce an intense, though but a short coldness; or at two, three, or four several times, if you desire, that the produced coldness should rather last somewhat longer than be so great. Stirre the powder in the Liquor with a stick or whalebone (or some other thing, that will not be injur'd by the fretting Brine, that will be made) to hasten the dissolution of the Salt ”

“ The removal of water by means of salt is in some senses a truer dehydration than actual drying in air, for changes of an undesirable sort take place in air drying that are never corrected, while salting may be done in such a way that few changes other than removal of water are brought about. The statement that salt preserves by extracting water is to be taken strictly and literally, for salt has no peculiar preserving or antiseptic quality, as many people seem to think. ”

“ In some diseases those sulphureous are preferred; but in others vegetable and animal, where also a consideration is to be had of the sickness, and bath it self, that one be not used for the other, to the great dammage of the sick. For almost all natural baths, and volatile spirits of salts, minerals, and metals, partake of some most subtle, penetrating, heating, and drying sulphureous salt spirit; but the spirits of vegetables, and animals partake of a certain volatility that is most subtle, penetrating, heating, opening, cutting and attenuating, both urinous and nitrous, viz. ”

“ Even at the highest temperatures, heat cannot effect the decomposition of common salt. At a red heat, pure sodic chloride melts and becomes liquid, and if cooled again, a solid crystalline mass is formed. Ordinary salt fuses at a lower temperature and volatilizes when heated in an open vessel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Saltwort, or Salsola, (salsus, salt) is chiefly maritime, and the kelp of our shores is principally obtained from it. At one time the carbonate of soda was derived from this kelp or barilla, the ashes being obtained from burning sea-weeds and a species of Salsola; but now it is almost invariably made from common salt, by adding sulphuric acid, and so converting the chloride of sodium into a sulphate, and afterwards, by combustion with chalk and small coal, resolving it into a sulphide, and then into a carbonate. It is manufactured on a very large scale, and is an important staple of commerce. ”

“ It is only volatile when there is more than a due proportion of either of the constituent parts. In these cases the smell of the salts is extremely pungent, but very different from one another; being manifestly acid, or alkaline, [Pg 171] according to the prevalence of each of these airs respectively.
Nitrous air admitted to alkaline air likewise occasioned a whitish cloud, and part of the air was absorbed; but it presently grew clear again; leaving only a little dimness on the sides of the vessel. This, however, might be a kind of salt, formed by the union of the two kinds of air. ”

“ For we could never yet see separated from Woods analyz’d only the vulgar way in close vessels any volatile Salt in a dry and Saline form, as that of Soot, which we have often had very Crystalline and Geometrically figur’d. And then, whereas the Saline parts of the Spirits of Guajacum, &c. appear upon distillation sluggish enough, the Salt of Soot seems to be one of the most volatile Bodies in all Nature ”

“ Is it not a blessing to know that nature has munificently provided a means whereby these distressing evils may be checked and definitely eradicated by a daily use of such an enemy to, and destroyer of, disease as the chloride of sodium, universally known as common salt? ”

“ Particles of chloride of sodium in volcanic ejections were no explanation of the formation of huge deposits of rock-salt, and since it was realized that salt in large quantity can only be obtained from salt water, and that it cannot be got naturally from the sea, it became evident that what man does in isolating tracts of sea-water to produce salt by solar evaporation, must have been practised by nature on an extensive scale in all ages. ”

“ The bacteria are adjusted to strong salt solutions, that is, the body fluid is of such concentration and their covering membrane is of such partial permeability that when surrounded by strong salt solution they live normally, but when water or weak brine surrounds them these relations are disturbed and they die. Probably water enters the cell in excessive quantity. It is known that the reddening does not attack fat fish. Perhaps the fat acts directly on the membrane, or indirectly by acting on the calcium and magnesium in the salt, to effect the disturbance. ”