put any extra salt into them. Nature herself has provided just as much salt as is required for the upkeep of our health. All the extra salt that we use is quite superfluous; all of it goes out of the body again in the form of perspiration, or in other ways, and no portion of it seems to have any useful function to perform in the body. One writer even holds that salt poisons the blood. He says that those who use no salt at all have their blood so pure that they are not affected even by snake-bite. We do not know if this is a fact or not, but this much we know from experience, that, in several diseases like piles and asthama, the disuse of salt at once produces appreciably beneficial results. And, on the other hand, I have not come across a single instance of a man being any the worse for not using salt. I myself left off the use of salt two years ago, and I have not only not suffered by it, but have even been benefitted in some respects. I have not now to drink as much water as before, and am more brisk and energetic. The reason for my disuse of salt was a very strange one: for it was occasioned by the illness of somebody else! The person whose illness led to it did not get worse after that, but remained in the same condition; and it is my faith that, if only the diseased person himself had given up the use of salt, he would have recovered completely.
