Salt

“ In the liquid of which I am speaking, there is, if not exactly salt as one sees it at table, at all events the most active part of salt, that which possesses in the highest degree the property of reducing everything we eat to a paste; and this is the real reason why we find all food so insipid which has not been seasoned with salt. As salt contains a principle essential to the work to be done by the stomach, some method had to be devised to induce us to provide him with it, and this method the porter up above has hit upon. ”

“ We have salt, or the chloride of sodium, presented to us in six different conditions, viz.: sea or salt water, salt or brine springs, salt lakes, salt mines, mountain or fossil or rock salt, and salt marshes. The characteristics of salt are just the same fundamentally, whether we extract it by evaporation from sea-water or salt lakes; whether we obtain it from salt-springs; whether we dig it out of the earth or by the excavation of salt mountains ”

“ Hesiod, Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, and other Philosophers, deliver that of all things, salt is most affine or near to God. I assert, that by the help of salt, many become the chosen Sons of God. If the Earth should want salt, there would not thence proceed any fruits affording necessary Aliment for Men, whence Mankind would perish, not being able to draw its Nourishment and Multiplication from the Air, but is constrained to take it from the Earth. Salt becometh Milk, Honey, Sugar, Wine, Bread, Flesh, and passeth into all those things which we want. ”

“ Use of Salt.—Among other follies of the day, some indiscreet persons are objecting to the use of salt, and propose to do without it. Nothing could be more absurd. Common salt is the most widely-distributed substance in the body; it exists in every fluid and in every solid; and not only is it everywhere present, but in almost every part it constitutes the largest portion of the ash when any tissue is burned. In particular, it is a constant constituent of the blood, and it maintains in it a proportion that is almost wholly independent of the quantity that is consumed with the food. ”

“ On carefully analysing the preceding remarks on food and some of its uses after it has been digested, and the composition and properties of the gastric juice, it is obvious that salt is not only a simple adjunct to food, and therefore not of much importance, but is an article of diet in every sense of the word, and as necessary, if not more so, than many aliments which are regarded as essential. ”

“ All must acknowledge the fact that salt is equally pleasant to the gourmand and the temperate; and that animal and vegetable food is not palatable without it. As it is pronounced to be “good” by the highest authority, we must regard it as one of Heaven’s best gifts to man. It would be a comparatively small matter were it but a condiment rendering food more pleasant to the taste; but when we know that it is indirectly a preserver of health, and that it also contravenes the attacks of disease, its value will, I hope, be considerably increased. ”

“ As salt is one of the principal constituents of the blood, and as it is present in the various tissues of the body, and as its ingestion is necessary for the animal economy, for the maintenance of its health, and consequently for the due development of the several organs, and the invigorating effects it exerts over their functional activity, we will now consider it in the relation it holds to animal and vegetable life. ”

“ For the salt of the World, or the Universal Essential salt, is nothing else but Salt-petre, when it hath after a due time attracted a life out of the air, to which end my secret circulatory instrument was invented, that such an animation might be the more conveniently brought to pass. ”

“ I am acquainted with the fact that a diet consisting exclusively of salt pork and salt beef, with very little variation or change, would be, if continued for any length of time, combined with the absence of fresh vegetables, productive of much mischief, and in the end no doubt scurvy would be the result; but for us to assert that every outbreak of this disease is produced by salted provisions, is to run into a very ridiculous error, and we fall into a trap cunningly laid for us by those whose interest it is to keep up this preposterous imposition in the eyes of the not too discerning public. ”

“ To prepare a Salt in an hours time, and without extraordinary charges, which makes all fixt matters63 volatile, and is of such virtue that when a little of it is joyned with Spirit of Wine it makes it so strong and fiery, that it dissolves all Metals, Minerals, Animals and Vegetables, carrying their Q. Essence over the Helm, and is the effecter of wonders in Physick and Alchymy: so that he who knows how to prepare and make use of this wonderfull Salt, needs never want either bodily health, or a competent supply of maintenance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The word “salary,” (money given to purchase salt) , which has floated down the stream of time, bears witness in itself to salt being considered the first necessary of human life. Sitting above or below the salt-cellar was the usual demarcation between the high-born and the dependent in the domestic life of the middle ages. In Eastern hospitality, eating salt with you constitutes all the difference between a friend and a foe. Bearing these facts in mind, then, and looking to the antiseptic qualities of salt, we steadily refuse to pay any attention to that common puff “salt, the forbidden food.” ”

“ The Truth of which no man hath cause to doubt; for I have shewed in various places, that barren grounds are made fruitful by the addition of that. Of this salt, which we may use instead of Dung, there is great diversity, for it is prepared of Wood-ashes, of Stones burnt to Lime, and of other bodies putrefied by length of time. But the Chief of all these is Salt-petre, being the salt of Vegetables, Animals, and Minerals putrefied, especially because it is endowed with a certain occult and sweet Fire. ”

“ Hence it comes to pass, that in one days digestion six pounds of Spirit of Salt will give seven pounds of the same; unto which, if you again add one pound of Water, and one pound of Salt, you shall have eight pound of Spirit of Salt: which by the addition of another pound of Salt, and one pound of Water more, it may be farther augmented; insomuch that the Spirit of Salt, by a continually-repeated addition of Water and Salt, gets a perpetual encrease, and the Metal is so far from being at all hindred in its maturation, as that it is daily ripened more and more. ”

“ But forasmuch as this nutriment which all the Vegetables do extract out of the Dung of the Beasts is nothing else but a urinous Salt, and that we know how to prepare out of the common Salt, such a urinous Salt which may be used about dunging and fatning the Earth instead of Dung, therefore verily we may be without that said Dung, being but furnished with such a Salt; the which being Alkalizated by the fire doth extend it self much wider, or goes farther, and dures much longer in the Earth, nourishing and dunging it, than the Beasts Dung doth. ”

“ Common Salt.—Salt, or sodium chloride, as an article of food, is obtained chiefly from the mineral kingdom; although plants contain it in small quantities, and it is also found in the tissues of nearly all animals used as food. In the human body, it is an ingredient of all the solids and fluids. ”

“ Salt is one of the commonest articles used in the preparation of our food. It has been questioned by some people whether salt was a real necessity as an animal food, or whether the taste for it is merely an acquired one. All peoples in all ages seem to have used salt, and reference to it is made in the earliest histories. Travelers tell us that savage tribes, wherever they exist, are as much addicted to the use of salt as civilized people. ”

“ In the Creation of the World salt was first made, from which afterwards the four Elements proceeded, so that by the Philosophers salt is called The Center of the Elements concentrated; and by the same reason, by which it was the first, it still is, and remaineth the last. All things arise from salt, and after they are destroyed by death, do again return into the same. Et sal thesauros grandes & possidet ignis. In Salt and Fire are contained great Treasures. Salt is Fire, and Fire is Salt, and they contain in themselves a third thing, to wit, an hidden Spirit. ”

“ And indeed, common salt-petre may be implanted into other salts, even as a Vegetable Seed is sown in the Earth, so as thence to get in a short space of time a great encrease, even an hundred, or a thousand-fold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All animals seem to require salt, and it is claimed by those who have tried the experiment that after one has refrained from the use of salt for a certain length of time the craving for it becomes exceedingly painful. It is most likely that the taste for salt is a natural craving. In any event, whether it is a natural or an artificial taste, it has become an article of the greatest importance in the preparation of food, as well as on account of its use in the arts. Salt is a compound of chlorine and sodium. ”

“ Our understanding of salt has been broadened and deepened. Salt is a much more complex thing to us now than it was before. Instead of simplifying salt by reducing it to its elements, we have greatly complicated it. But notice this particularly: The new knowledge has not enhanced by one jot our knowledge of the physical properties of salt. There is nothing whatever in the properties of the sodium or the chlorine that gives us any clue to the properties of the salt. ”

“ Late researches have also detected both in rock and in other salt, the presence of muriate of potass, and muriate of magnesia. [640] Solubility. It is equally soluble in cold and in hot water, one part of the salt requiring rather more than 21⁄2 parts. Med. Uses. The effects of salt upon the animal and vegetable kingdoms, are striking and important, [641] and have furnished objects of the most interesting enquiry to the physiologist, the chemist, the physician, and the agriculturist; it appears to be a natural stimulant to the digestive organs ”

“ Salt is intimately associated with water, which plays an intermediate part also in nutrition, being a bearer or carrier of nutritious matters through the body.
Salt seems to regulate the absorption and use of nutrients. It is found in the greatest quantity in the blood and chyle. It doubtless facilitates digestion by rendering foods more savory, and thus causing the digestive juices to flow more freely. Sodium chlorid is contained in most if not all kinds of food, but not in sufficient quantity to supply the wants of the body; it therefore becomes a necessary part of a diet. ”

“ It is not to be regretted if salt meat is driven away from our markets by fresh, for salt draws the juice out of the meat with all its soluble constituents, and at the same time hardens the fibre of the meat itself, and so makes it less digestible. ”

“ Therefore, because the growing faculty of Vegetables, Animals, and Minerals, or Metals, taketh its rise from the only and Universal Salt of the Earth, and this from the Salt of the Sea, and the Sea Salt, from the Sun, if the Divine Goodness shall grant me Life, I will shew to my Friends, how by small labour and charge, the Universal Salt fatness, fit for the rendring all barren and sandy ground fruitful, instead of Dung, may be copiously separated from Sea Salt. ”

“ More than half the ten ounces of salts consist of it alone, which will make you understand better than before, what I explained with reference to the stomach; that is, why we put salt in our food. The porter above is quite up to his business when he asks everyone who enters to produce his little bit of salt. It is an attention which the blood appreciates very highly, although table-salt is of no great use to him in his building operations ”

“ First, let me remind certain food religionists: salt is salt is salt is salt and sugar is sugar is sugar. There are no good forms of salt and no good forms of sugar. Salt from a mine and salt from the sea both have the same harmful effect; white sugar, natural brown sugar, honey, molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, whatever sweet have you. All are sugars and all have the similar harmful effects. I know of no harmless salt substitute that really tastes salty. Nutrisweet is basically harmless to most people and can be used as a very satisfactory replacement for sugars. ”