RE: Salt (excerpt from Herbert Shelton) [s]

[Guest guest]

SALT

 

A salt is the result of the combination of a metal with an acid. There

are many of these known to the chemist, as for example, sodium carbonate,

sodium phosphate, etc. Only a few salts are known to the layman as such.

Epsom salts, Glauber salts, Rochelle salts, smelling salts and bath salts,

etc., are well-known salts. No one thinks it necessary to eat these salts

daily. Although sodium, carbon and phosphorus are all essential ingredients

of the living body, nobody thinks it essential to eat sodium carbonate or

sodium phosphate daily. Only sodium chloride (a combination of sodium and

chlorine) is thought to be essential as a daily addition to our diet.

 

DISTRIBUTION

 

Sodium chloride (common salt) exists in the soil and exists in all parts

of the world. The waters of the ocean and salt lakes of the world are

abundantly supplied with it as it is washed out of the soil by the rains and

carried down the streams to the lakes and oceans. The drying up of salt

lakes, of ocean arms and marshes, etc., has left large deposits of salt in

many parts of the earth. Other parts are not supplied with the salt

deposits. Few of these deposits are above ground. Almost all of them are

covered over with and intermixed with soil. Outcroppings of salt are so rare

that salt is not available to animal life in most parts of the globe.

 

Salt is plentiful in Northern Europe, scarce in China, Korea and India,

scarce in the Malayan Peninsula , unknown in Western Africa, plentiful in

North America, but scarcely known to the pre-Columbian Indians of this

continent.

 

By and large the white man gets much salt, the yellow man some, the brown

man little and the black man none at all. These facts are generally known to

scientists, yet they continue to ignore the fact that whole tribes and races

have maintained health and strength for many centuries without the use of

salt.

 

SALT INNUTRITIOUS

 

Is salt a necessity of life? There are a number of salts that are

essential to animal (and plant) life. These are the various organic salts

synthesized by plants in their processes of growth. Iron salts, copper

salts, calcium salts, magnesium salts, etc., are needed, but these are not

the salts referred to when salt is declared a necessity of life.

 

Eating salt is a violation of the provisions of nature that plants shall

subsist upon the soil and animals shall subsist upon the spare products of

the plant. We try to skip the vegetable and go directly to the mineral

kingdom for our food when we eat salt. We contend not only that the only

salts that are useful to the body are those contained in foods, but also

that if salts are taken in any other form they are positively injurious.

 

Salt is wholly innutritious and affords no nourishment to the body. It is

both indigestible and unassimilable. It enters the body as a crude inorganic

salt which the body cannot utilize, it is absorbed unchanged, goes the

rounds of the general circulation as an unassimilated salt, and is finally

eliminated as such.

 

WILD ANIMALS DO NOT NEED SALT

 

Concerning the popular superstition that animals crave and seek salt

Sylvester Graham says, " As to the instinct of the lower animals, it is not

true that there is any animal in Nature, whose natural history is known to

man, which instinctively makes a dietetic use of salt. "

 

It is such an obvious fact that in a state of nature few, if any, animals

ever receive salt from any source, save from their foods, that it should not

require statement. The enormous herds of bison that once roamed the plains

of America did not get salt. The numerous herds of wild horses that are now

all but extinct did not receive salt. There are still large numbers of deer

in America and these do not receive salt. Birds, rabbits, wolves, and other

wild animals that still exist in abundance are not salt eaters. The vigor

and fine condition maintained by the bison, horse and deer reveal how false

is the contention that salt is essential to animal life. In those parts of

the world where salt deposits are scarce or non-existent, so that man is

without salt, the animal life of the regions is also without salt.

 

" SALT LICKS "

 

Popular superstition has it that animals frequent " salt licks " to procure

their regular supply of salt. This superstition is held by scientific men

who should know better.

 

Where are these much-talked of " salt-licks? " I have been unable to find

one or to find anybody who has ever known where there is one. I have talked

to large numbers of men who have roamed all over the whole of the western

part of the U. S., from Kentucky to the Pacific and none of them have ever

seen a salt lick. Some of them have never even so much as heard of such

things. If they exist, they must be very rare and but a few animals ever

have access to them.

 

A salt lick, if such a thing exists at all, would be an outcropping of a

salt deposit. Salt deposits are not laid down in great numbers all over the

world, but are commonly far apart. Rarely, if ever, are there outcroppings

of them. This means that salt licks, if they ever exist, are so rare that

few animals ever have access to them. Brine springs do exist, but they are

not common. Comparatively few animals have access to these.

 

Mr. Colburn says: " I have diligently inquired of old hunters and pioneers

for confirmation of the story that deer and buffalo are in the habit of

visiting regularly the salt springs or 'licks,' in order to eat salt. I have

not been able to find one who has seen the licking process himself. There is

reason to believe that hunters do take their positions at certain brine

springs to find their game, and that the deer at certain seasons of the year

resort to them--precisely why, is not determined. Nothing of the kind is

claimed of the buffalo; that is a tradition. "

 

I myself have been over considerable stretches of this fair land and have

never seen a " salt lick. " What is more, I have inquired of many old hunters,

and have been surprised to find that most of these did not even know what I

was talking about. One of these, of whom I inquired, had hunted deer over

Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona and said he had never heard of a

" salt lick. "

 

If it is true, as Mr. Colburn seems to think, that deer do frequent brine

springs at certain seasons of the year, it is not possible that all deer do

so, for there are vast stretches of land in this country that are or were,

at one time, inhabited by deer, where no such springs exist. This is

especially true of the plains country of our great southwest, where a spring

of any kind is a novelty.

 

 

 

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