with it.

It was also a custom amongst the Hebrews, which was never departed from, to rub new-born infants with salt:24 this practice was in every respect healthy and cleanly, and if we Christians were wise we should, from a hygienic point of view, strictly follow a custom which is so conducive to health; for salt hardens the skin of newly-born children and renders it more firm, and prevents (unless there is an hereditary taint) any irritation or local eruption of the skin.

The first mention of salt as a condiment is to be found in Job;25 and as this beautiful book, which delineates the vicissitudes to which life is subjected, is supposed to have been written by Moses when he was dwelling amongst the Midianites, there is no doubt but that it was in general use not only in Egypt, but also amongst the surrounding nations. The answer to the question propounded by the persecuted man of Uz is the same now as it was three thousand years ago—there is nothing savoury without salt, and to a certainty there is no real permanent health without salt.

The Jews, like all Asiatic races, were much afflicted with various forms of leprosy, and as salt is an indirect antidote to cutaneous eruptions, they used it not so much as a condiment, but as a shield to ward off and protect them from those repulsive diseases which rendered those who were attacked obnoxious to their fellow-countrymen, by whom they were treated as outcasts till they had recovered from their loathsome maladies. To this day we find that by far the greater number who suffer from cutaneous diseases hardly ever eat salt with their food; this is an unquestionable fact, and truly significant of its inestimable virtue as an anti-morbific agent.

The Great Master says (and who will dispute such an unanswerable verity?) “salt is good;” and then He adds, “but if the salt has lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it?”26 Addressing His disciples, He says: “Ye are the salt of the earth,” and also, “Have salt in yourselves.”27 These sayings prove in the most unmistakable language that salt is highly necessary. Our Saviour applies it in a religious sense, it is true, but He was too much of a philosopher, too great a logician, to use a metaphor of which the application could be shaken and disproved in the abstract, if the image or figure were fundamentally incorrect or inconsistent with the lesson which it was intended to convey; besides, He never would have declared it “good” had it been in the slightest degree provocative of anything deleterious to the human race, neither would He have made use of a figurative mode of speech if He could not have based it on a physical fact.

We are thus told in three simple words the value of salt, and none save the shallow, or the sophist, would attempt to prove the contrary. 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.

I shall be more than satisfied if I am able to persuade those unwise people who make it a rule never to use salt, to resort to it at once without hesitation; for if they wish to be in a fair state of health, to have clear wholesome skins and fresh complexions, to be free from intestinal parasites and cutaneous diseases, to have their digestive organs perform their functions compatible with health and personal comfort, they must have, practically speaking, salt in themselves.

We have thus, from very scanty records concerning salt, essayed to clear up, though very inconclusively, and I fear unsatisfactorily, certain points which have been unnoticed, by reason, I think, of the dense obtenebration with which the subject is surrounded; for it has hitherto baffled the researches of the geologist to discover its pristine source, and neither do we know who first used it as a condiment. The chemist can experimentalise with this inorganic substance to detect the presence of other bodies, and he knows its worth in the laboratory; but as for its origin, he is as much in the dark as the geologist.

CHAPTER III.

SALT AS A CHEMICAL, THERAPEUTICAL, AND TOXICOLOGICAL AGENT.

As a chemical agent, and from the manufacturing uses to which it is now put, salt is a most invaluable article from a scientific as well as from a commercial point of view. I will therefore draw the attention of my reader to its chemical properties; I will then allude to a few drugs which are partially derived from salt or the chloride of sodium; and will cursorily notice one great staple of commerce which owes the rapidity of manufacture to its sole agency, including some remarks on it as a poison.

Chlorine gas, which is obtained from the chloride of sodium, was discovered by Scheele in 1777, who named it dephlogisticated muriatic acid. Berthollet in 1785 termed it oxygenated muriatic acid. Sir Humphry Davy called it chlorine (from χλωρὸς, green) on account of its colour, and it has kept this name ever since. We thus see that salt is of great use to the chemist, for he not only obtains chlorine gas from it, but also hydrochloric acid, a most useful and efficacious drug in the treatment of some hepatic diseases. Chlorine also enters into combination with other chemical substances known as chlorides and chlorates, sub-chlorides and per-chlorides; for instance, we have the chloride of ammonium and the chlorate of potash; we also have the sub-chloride of mercury, or calomel, and the perchloride of mercury, or corrosive sublimate, with various others.

According to Pereira, hydrochloric acid was known to Djafar, or Geber, an Arabian chemist who flourished in the eighth century, and whom Roger Bacon calls magister magistrorum. Everyone is acquainted with the chloride of lime, a substance so generally used for household and disinfecting purposes, that I need only mention it; besides this, there are other salts with which chlorine enters into combination.

Formerly, to bleach cotton it was required to expose the material to the action of the sun and air, rendering the process long and tedious, as it took on the average quite six or eight months, and likewise a large surface of land was necessary for the operation.

Now, owing to chlorine gas, the process is completed in a few hours, and a comparatively small building is quite sufficient for the purpose; the fibre is beautifully and permanently whitened, and the manufacturer experiences the pleasing satisfaction