href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@46212@[email protected]#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[33]

In Madagascar also the covenant of salt is known, as in other parts of the East.[34] And thus on every continent and on the islands of the sea.

[Pg 36]
[Pg 37]

V
SALT REPRESENTING BLOOD

There are indications in the customs of primitive peoples that "blood" and "salt" are recognized as in some sense interchangeable in their natures, qualities, and uses. And in this, as in many another matter, the trend of modern science seems to be in the line of primitive indications.

Peoples who have not salt available are accustomed to substitute for it fresh blood, as though the essential properties of salt were obtainable in this way. An observant medical scientist, writing of his travels in eastern Equatorial Africa, tells of the habit of the Masai people of drinking the warm blood fresh from the bullocks they kill; and this he characterizes as "a wise though repulsive" proceeding, "as the blood thus drunk provided the salts so necessary in human economy; for the Masai do not partake of any salt in its common form."[35]

Similarly, Dr. David Livingstone noted the fact that when he was among peoples who had difficulty in procuring salt, fresh-killed meat seemed to satisfy the natural craving for salt, while vegetable diet without salt caused indigestion.[36] In portions of China, also, where salt is not obtainable, or where it is too expensive for ordinary use, the blood of pigs or fowls is carefully preserved and eaten as if a substitute for salt.

Professor Bunge of Basel, who is quite an authority in the realm of physiological and pathological chemistry, speaking on the relation of salt and blood, says that "at every period, in every part of the world, and in every climate, there are people who use salt as well as those who do not. The people who take salt, though differing from each other in every other respect, are all characterized by a vegetable diet; in the same way, those who do not use any salt are all alike in taking animal food."

He says, moreover: "It is ... noteworthy that the people who live on an animal diet without salt, carefully avoid loss of blood when they slaughter the animals. This was told me by four different naturalists who have lived among flesh-eaters in various parts of northern Russia and Siberia. The Samoyedes, when dining off reindeer flesh, dip every mouthful in blood before eating it. The Esquimaux in Greenland are said to plug the wound as soon as they have killed a seal." Like testimony comes from India, Arabia, Africa, Australia, and various parts of America.[37]

The Jews of to-day, who are careful to drain the blood from slaughtered animals prepared for food, are accustomed to put salt freely on the meat thus drained. This is in accordance with the prescription of the Talmud, for the purpose of absorbing the blood not drawn out from the main bloodvessels. At the close of two hours from the slaughtering, the meat is washed for cooking. Whatever be the reason rendered for this application of salt, and its remaining on the flesh for a time, may there not thus be an instinctive supplying of the salts taken away by draining out the blood?

"Salt" and "salts" are terms often used interchangeably in the common mind. While they are distinct as employed by a scientist, it is not to be wondered at that they are confused by those who fail to note the differences; nor is it important to consider these differences in primitive thought and customs.

"A salt," as the chemists use the term, is a combination of an acid and a base. There are many salts in use in the world; among these the one best known and most widely used and valued is sodium chloride, or what is popularly known as "common salt." This has been used and prized, the world over, among all classes of men, from the earliest historic times.

Salt has long been popularly claimed as an important element of the liquids of the body, as shown in the blood, in the tears, and in the perspiration, of mankind. Later scientific experiments have confirmed ancient and traditional claims, that saline injections avail like blood transfusion for the preservation of life in an emergency.[38]

It has long been common among ordinary people to administer salt to one taken with a hemorrhage of the lungs, or stomach, or nose. This is the folk-lore remedy in many regions. Moreover, under careful medical and surgical direction it is now customary in the hospitals to keep on hand a warm solution of salt to inject into the veins or tissues of persons brought in sinking from a sudden loss of blood. Whatever connection the two ideas—the popular and the scientific—may or may not have, it is not to be wondered at that it has long been thought that, when blood has gone out from the body, salt might well go in.

Blood transfusion, by which the blood or life of a stronger or fresher person may permeate the being of a sinking one, has been known of for centuries, and there are at least traces of it in tradition from the earliest ages.[39] More recent experiments have shown that a saline solution is even safer and more efficacious than the warm blood from another life; now, therefore, this has largely taken the place of blood in supplying the waste occasioned by severe hemorrhages.[40] Various illustrations of this treatment are given as showing that when persons were in a very low condition through loss of blood, they have been rescued and restored through copious injections of a saline solution.[41]

The use of blood as food was forbidden to Noah and his sons after the Flood.[42] A tradition of the Turkish or Tatar nations says that Noah's son Japheth was their immediate ancestor, and that Toutug, or Toumuk, a grandson of Japheth, discovered salt as an article of diet by accidentally dropping a morsel of food on to salt earth, and thus