the first third of the nineteenth century, in which he claims that
salt practically represents blood, stood all by itself in the history
of medicine, it would have less importance than it has in a formal
treatise of this kind; yet even then it would show that such an idea
had before now found a place in the human mind. But it by no means
stands thus alone; a similar claim has been made both earlier and
later.
Pliny, in his day, at the beginning of the Christian era, records it
as the common belief that salt is foremost among human remedies for
disease, and among preventives of sickness of all kinds.[47] He gives
prominence to salt as a cure of leprosy,[48] whereas blood transfusion
and blood bathing was the traditional treatment of that disorder.[49]
Pliny also speaks of salt itself, and of salt fish in large quantities,
as a supposed remedy for the bite of serpents,[50] this being in the
line of asserted remedies among the Indians, according to Dr. Stevens.
Various other disorders, especially of the blood, are named by Pliny as
curable by salt.
[47] _Hist. Nat._, XXXI., 45.
[48] _Ibid._
[49] _Blood Covenant_, pp. 116 f., 125, 287 f., 324.
[50] _Hist. Nat._, XXXI., 41; XXXII., 17.
Seventy years after the treatise of Dr. Stevens, a volume, recently
published in London by C. Godfrey Gümpel on "Common Salt,"[51] claims
even more than Pliny, or any writer since his day, for "the vital
importance of common salt for our whole physical and social life." He
claims that of all the constituents of our life's blood "there is none
which can possibly surpass common salt in its necessity for a strong
healthy blood,"[52] and that both the red corpuscles and the white are
largely dependent for their normal condition on "the presence of common
salt in the system."[53]
[51] _Common Salt: Its Use and Necessity for the Maintenance of Health
and the Prevention of Disease_, p. 1.
[52] _Ibid._, p. 37.
[53] _Ibid._, p. 41.
A writer in the Asiatic Quarterly Review, not long ago declared that
the government salt monopoly of the British Empire in India (since
practically abolished, or modified) was a cause of greater evils than
those resulting from either opium or alcohol. This claim is based on
the idea that a lack of salt by the common people of India tends to a
deterioration of blood and consequent loss of life. Asiatic cholera
is said to be promoted by the lack of salt in the blood. Men and
cattle alike are said to be sufferers from this cause, and the soil is
rendered less fertile. Whether this idea is well grounded is a minor
matter; that the idea has been in many minds is not to be questioned.
Thus it will be seen that in the primitive mind salt and blood have
seemed to have common properties, and to be in a sense interchangeable,
while the more careful observers in the world of science have rather
grown toward this thought than away from it. Be it correct or
incorrect, the human mind has never been able to rid itself of the idea.
Salt is sometimes used in the rite of blood brotherhood among
primitive peoples, as is also wine, both wine and salt being counted
the equivalent of blood, and the original and the substitute being
sometimes employed together as if to intensify the symbolism. Stanley
tells of the use of salt in this rite on the occasion of its
performance with Ngalyema in the Congo region.[54] And so again in
other cases.[55]
[54] _The Congo_, I., 383-385.
[55] _Ibid._, II., 21-24, 79-90.
It is a common practice in the East to welcome an honored guest to
one's house by sacrificing an animal at the doorway, and letting its
blood pour out on the threshold, to be stepped over by the guest,
as a mode of adoption, or of covenant-making.[56] When such a guest
comes unexpectedly, and there is not time to obtain an animal for the
welcoming sacrifice, it is customary to take salt and strew it in
lieu of blood on the threshold,--salt being thus recognized as the
equivalent, or as a representative, of blood.[57]
[56] See _Threshold Covenant_, passim.
[57] _Ibid._, p. 5; Griffis's _Mikado's Empire_, pp. 467, 470; Isabella
Bird's _Untrodden Tracks in Japan_, I., 392.
The measure of love and honor accorded to the welcomed guest is
indicated by the cost or preciousness of the sacrifice on the
threshold. There are traditions, at least, of the sacrifice of a son of
the host in this way. Again a favorite horse has been thus sacrificed.
More frequently it is a lamb that is the sacrifice. If there is no
lamb available, a fowl or a pigeon is thus offered. The essential
factor in every case is the blood, the life, outpoured. If, however, no
actual blood is obtainable, salt, as representing blood, is accepted
as indicating the love and the spirit which prompts the welcome,
according to the giver's means. There could hardly be a fuller proof of
the identity of salt and blood in the primitive mind.
When a Siamese student was asked by the writer whether the rite of
blood-covenanting was known in his land, he replied: "There is no
'blood covenant' so far as I know. The custom is, if two persons are
desirous to become firm friends or brothers they drink together _salted
water_; then each takes an oath." He also suggested that he had heard
that in former times they drank _a fowl's blood_ in this rite.
Again, the mode of making a covenant of salt in some portions of the
East coincides with this suggested identification of salt with blood in
the primitive mind. In the Lebanon region, where the blood covenant, as
a bond of union, is still recognized and practised,[58] the covenant
of salt is also well known, not only as between new comers who are to
enter into a mutual alliance, but as bringing into union friends who
would be as one. In such cases a sword is taken, and salt is laid on
its blade. The two friends in turn lick of the salt that is to unite
them, as if they were tasting of common blood after the fashion of the
"blood-lickers" in Mecca.[59]
[58] See _Blood Covenant_, pp. 5-7.
[59] See Smith's _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 48.
Another illustration of this mode is given by Sir Frederick Henniker,
in his notes of a journey in the East in 1819-20.[60] It was a shaykh
of the Arabs who escorted him from Mt. Sinai northward, who cut this
covenant with Sir Frederick. On the request being made for such an
assurance of fidelity from the shaykh, "he immediately drew his sword,"
says Sir Frederick, "placed some salt upon the blade, and then put
a portion of it into his mouth, and desired me to do the same; and
'Now, cousin,' said he, 'your life is as sacred as my own;' or, as he
expressed himself, 'Son of my uncle, your head is upon my shoulders.'"
Before this act the two were as cousins; now they were as one, the head
of one being upon the shoulders of the other. The similarity of this
rite with that of the blood covenant, in both its form and meaning, is
obvious.
[60] _Visit to Egypt, Nubia_, etc., p. 242.
This correspondence of salt and blood in primitive thought, and in
fact, will perhaps throw light on a disputed reference in a fragment
of Ennius[61] to "_salsus sanguis_" (salted blood, or briny blood). It
would seem that as the Jews held that the blood is the life, and the
life is in the blood, similarly Greeks and Romans recognized the truth
that salt is in the blood, and the blood is salt.
[61] Cited in _Macrobius_, 6, 2.
In the second century there were Christian ascetics who refused to take
wine in the eucharist. Among these the Elkesaites and the Ebionites
employed bread and salt instead of bread and wine. This seems to have
been a recognition of the fact that salt, like wine, represented
blood.[62]
[62] See Clementine, _Homilies_, IV. 6; XIII. 8; XIV. 1, 8; XIX. 25,
cited in art. "Elkesai" in Smith and Wace's _Dict. of Christian Biog._
Professor Hermann Collitz, of Bryn Mawr, has suggested, in this
connection, that the very words, in Latin, for salt and blood, _sal_
and _sanguis_, are from the same root.[63]
[63] Professor Collitz says, on this point: "The Early European word
for salt, _sal_ (nominative _s[=a]l-d_, genitive _sal-n-és_ according
to Joh. Schmidt) which probably goes back to the Indo-European period,
may be derived from the same root to which the Sanskrit _ás-r-g_
(genitive _as-n-ás_) 'blood,' and Latin _s-an-gu-i-s_ (genitive
_s-an-gu-in-is_) belong. The latter, as F. de Saussure (_Système
primitif des voyelles Indo-Européennes_, Leipzig, 1897, p. 225) has
shown, comes from a root _es_, which lost its initial vowel if the
suffix was accented. If we connect the two groups of words, we should
say that _sal_ is derived from this root _es_ by a suffix _al_, similar
to the suffix _el_ in the word for 'sun' (Indo-European _s[=a]'v-el_,
from root _s[=a]v_), or to the suffix _a-lo_ in Greek _meg-a-lo-s_ as
compared with _meg-a-s_. The root _es_ is probably the same from which
the word for 'to be' (Sanskrit _as-mi_, Latin _sum_) is derived, and
the meaning of which seems to have been originally 'to live.'"
Certainly salt is sometimes used as a substitute for blood in primitive
covenanting; on the other hand, blood is used for salt among some
primitive peoples as an essential accompaniment of food. These facts
being noticed by the author of this volume first suggested to him the
real meaning of the covenant of salt.
VI
SALT REPRESENTING LIFE
As blood is synonymous with life in primitive thought and practice,[64]
and as salt has been shown to represent blood in the primitive mind,
so salt seems to stand for life in many a form of primitive speech and
in the world's symbolism. When, indeed, we speak of salt as preserving
flesh from corruption, we refer to the staying of the process of death
by an added element of life; preserving by re-vivifying, rather than by
embalming.
[64] See _Blood Covenant_, passim.
Plutarch says of the power of salt in this direction: "All flesh is
dead and part of a lifeless carcass; but the virtue of salt being added
to it, like a soul, gives it a pleasing relish and poignancy."[65] All
life is from the one Source of Life, and in this sense it is that life
is divine. Thus Plutarch calls attention to the fact that Homer[66]
speaks of salt as "divine," and that "Plato delivers, that by man's
laws salt is to be accounted most sacred."[67] No other material is
thus reckoned from primitive days sacred and divine, unless it be
blood, which is the synonym of life.[68]
[65] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_ (Goodwin's ed.), Book IV., Quest. IV., § 3.
[66] Homer's _Iliad_, IX., 214.
[67] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_ (Goodwin's ed.), Book V., Quest. X., §§ 1,
2.
[68] Lev. 17 : 11; Deut. 12 : 23. _Blood Covenant_, p. 38 f.
An Oriental form of oath sometimes substitutes "salt" for "life;"
as where the prime minister of Persia in a conference with James
Morier, secretary of the English embassy, at Teheran, early in this
century, swore "by the salt of Fatti Ali Shah"--the then reigning
Shah of Persia.[69] Indeed, to swear "by the salt" is a common form
of asseveration among Arabs; as to swear by the life, one's own or
another's, is a well-known oath in the East.[70]
[69] Morier's _Journey through Persia_, p. 200.
[70] See, for example, Arvieux on _Customs of Bedouin Arabs_, p. 43,
quoted in Rosenmüller's _Das alte und des neue Morgenland_, II., 15.
Where we would say of one who is foremost in inspiriting and enlivening
a social gathering, "He was the _life_ of the party," the Arabs say,
"He was the _salt_ of the party."
The "salt of youth" is synonymous with the virility and vigor of life,
that show themselves in the age of strong passion. Thus Justice Shallow
says to Master Page: "Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen,
Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us."[71] Iago refers
to young gallants in their passion, "as salt as wolves in pride."[72]
And Menecrates refers to "salt Cleopatra" in her loves with Antony.[73]
Mrs. Browning seems to have a similar idea as to the significance of
salt, when she says in "A Vision of Poets:"
"And poor, proud Byron,--sad as grave
And salt as life; forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave."
[71] _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act II., Scene 3.
[72] _Othello_, Act III., Scene 3.
[73] _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act II., Scene 1.
Even in Plutarch's day this truth was recognized by the Greeks as
possibly having influenced the ancient Egyptians to forbid salt to
their priests, who must be pure and chaste, because salt "by its heat
is provocative and apt to raise lust."[74] It would seem, however, that
the prohibition of salt as food to Egyptian priests is easier to be
accounted for by the fact that it was recognized as the equivalent of
blood and life. Therefore those priests were not to partake of salt,
"no, not so much as in their bread."[75]
[74] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_, Book V., Quest. X., §§ 1, 2.
[75] _Ibid._
In this line of thought Florus says of salt: "Consider farther whether
its power of preserving a long time dead bodies from rotting be not a
_divine_ property, and opposite to death; since it preserves part, and
will not suffer that which is mortal wholly to be destroyed. But as the
soul, which is our diviner part, connects the limbs of animals, and
keeps the composure from dissolution; thus salt applied to dead bodies,
and imitating the work of the soul, stops those parts that were falling
to corruption, binds and confines them, and so makes them keep their
union and agreement with one another."[76]
[76] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_, Book V., Quest. X., §§ 1, 2.
Philinus goes a step farther when he asks: "Do you not think that
that which is generative is to be esteemed divine, seeing God is the
principle of all things?"[77] And Plutarch adds suggestively that
salt is by some supposed to be a means of life, not only exciting
desire for generation, but actually causing procreation; "the females
(among the lower animals), as some imagine, conceiving without the
help of the males, only by licking salt. But [as he thinks] it is most
probable that the salt raiseth an itching in animals, and so makes
them salacious and eager to couple. And perhaps for the same reason
they call a surprising and bewitching beauty, such as is apt to move
and entice, _halmuron kai drimu_, 'saltish.' And I think the poets had
a respect to this generative power of salt in their fable of Venus
springing from the sea."[78]
[77] _Ibid._
[78] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_, Book V., Quest. X., §§ 1, 2.
In Central and South America it was deemed necessary to abstain from
salt while praying and sacrificing, with a desire to obtain children.
So far it was among the Maya nations of the New World as among the
priests of Ancient Egypt.[79]
[79] See Bancroft's _Native Races of the Pacific Coast_, II., 678.
An Oriental proverb says: "If thou takest the salt [the life, or soul]
from the flesh [the body] then thou mayest throw it [the flesh] to the
dogs." This has been explained by the rabbis, as considering "salt"
here synonymous with the soul, or life, of man, which comes from God,
in distinction from man's body, which comes from his parents. "God
gives the spirit [the breath], the soul, the features, the hearing,
the organs of speech, the gait, the perceptions, the reason, and the
intuition. When now the time comes for man to depart out of the world,
God takes his part, and the part which comes from the parents [the
body] he lays before them."[80]
[80] Niddah 31 a, quoted by Rev. Dr. Marcus Jastrow in _The Sunday
School Times_ for April 28, 1894.
When Elisha, the prophet of Israel, was met by the men of Jericho,
as he came from the scene of Elijah's translation to enter upon his
mission as the successor of Elijah and was told of the death-dealing
power of the waters of the city, his words and action seemed to
emphasize the correspondence of salt with life. "He said, Bring me a
new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he
went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast salt therein, and
said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not
be from thence any more death or miscarrying [of the land]. So the
waters were healed [were restored to life] unto this day, according to
the word of Elisha which he spake."[81]
[81] 2 Kings 2 : 19-22.
A spring of water is in itself so important to a primitive people
that it is not to be wondered at that water is called the Gift of
God, and that a living spring is looked at as in a sense divine, and
that it has even been worshiped as a god among primitive peoples.[82]
When, therefore, salt, as the synonym of life or of blood, is found
in a spring of living water, it is natural to recognize the spot as
peculiarly favored of God, or of the gods. Thus "among inland peoples a
salt spring was regarded as a special gift of the gods. The Chaonians
in Epirus had one which flowed into a stream where there were [as in
the Dead Sea] no fish; and the legend was that Heracles had allowed
their forefathers to have salt instead of fish (_Aristotle_). The
Germans waged war for saline streams, and believed that the presence of
salt invested a district with peculiar sanctity, and made it a place
where prayers were most readily heard (Tacitus, _Ann._, XIII., 57)."[83]
[82] See _Kadesh-barnea_, p. 36, and note, 298 f.; and _Studies in
Oriental Social Life_, pp. 213, 404 f.
[83] W. Robertson Smith in art. "Salt" in _Encyc. Brit._, 9th ed.
There is said to be a salt lake in the mountain region of Koordistan,
which was changed from fresh water to salt, by St. Peter, when he first
came thither preaching Christianity. He wrought this change so that he
could influence the people to accept his teaching through sharing his
life by partaking of the salt. To this day the tradition remains, that,
if the natives will bathe in that lake, they will renew their faith.
Aside from the question of any basis of truth in the legend, it remains
as a survival of the primitive idea of a real connection of shared salt
with shared life.
It is customary among some primitive peoples to anoint or smear a
new-born babe with blood, as a means of giving him more and fuller
life.[84] Thus among the ancient Caribs, of South America, "as soon as
a male child was brought into the world, he was sprinkled with some
drops of his father's blood;" the father "fondly believing that the
same degree of courage which he had himself displayed, was by these
means transmitted to his son."[85] In one of the Kaffir tribes of South
Africa, when a new chief assumes authority, it was customary to wash
him in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who was put
to death on the occasion. In order to give more life and character to
the freshly elevated representative of the ruling family, the family
life was drawn from the veins of one near him, in order that it might
be absorbed by him who could use it more imposingly.[86]
[84] _Blood Covenant_, p. 137 f.
[85] Edwards's _Hist. of Brit. West Ind._, I. 47, referred to in _Blood
Covenant_, p. 137 f.
[86] Shooter's _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 216, _ibid._
The Bheels are a brave and warlike race of mountaineers of Hindostan.
They claim to have been, formerly, the rulers of all their region, but
either by defeat in war or by voluntary concession to have yielded
their power to other peoples, whom they now authorize to rule in
their old domain. When, therefore, a new rajput, or chief ruler,
comes into power in any of the surrounding countries, this right to
rule is conceded, or ratified, by an anointing of blood drawn from
the toe or thumb of a Bheel. The right of giving this blood, or new
life, is claimed by particular Bheel families; and the belief that the
individual from whose veins the blood is drawn never lives beyond a
twelvemonth, in no degree operates to repress the desire of the Bheels
to furnish the blood of anointing.[87]
[87] _Trans. Royal Asiat. Soc._, I., 69, _ibid._
Salt is similarly used to-day, in the East and elsewhere.[88] A
new-born child is at once washed and salted. If an Oriental seems
lacking in life or wisdom, or is, as we would say, exceptionally
"fresh," it is said of him, "He wasn't salted when he was born." This
idea would seem to be included in the prophet's reproach of Jerusalem:
"Neither wast thou washed in water to cleanse thee; thou wast not
salted at all, nor swaddled at all."[89]
[88] Van Lennep's _Bible Lands_, p. 569.
[89] Ezek. 16 : 4.
As at birth, so at death, salt seems to stand in primitive thought for
blood, or life, in washing or anointing, in the hope of supplying the
special lack or need of the individual. Among the cannibals of Borneo,
on the death of a rajah or chief, the desire seems to be to restore him
to life if it be possible. His body is rubbed or bathed with salt. He
is then dressed in his best apparel, and placed in a sitting posture.
In his hands are placed his shield and mandau. If this application
of new life and this special appeal to action fail to arouse him,
he is counted as hopelessly dead; the arms are taken from him, the
body is undressed, and wrapped in a piece of cloth, and placed in the
ground.[90]
[90] Carl Bock's _Head Hunters of Borneo_, p. 224.
A traveler in Asia Minor speaks of the practice among the Toorkomans
of the mother's dipping a child two or three times into a skin of salt
water, at the time of his naming. This would seem to be a primitive
rite, and not a Christian one. The father of the child meanwhile eats
honeyed cake, and drinks thickened milk.[91]
[91] W. Eassie, in _Notes and Queries_, 3d series, II., 318.
Milk is sometimes accepted by the Arabs as a substitute for salt, as
the essential factor in the covenant of salt (the _milha_).[92] Milk is
nature's life food, it stands for liquid life; two "milk brothers" are
somewhat as blood brothers, brothers by a common life.[93] "There seem
to be indications," says W. Robertson Smith,[94] "that many primitive
peoples regard milk as a kind of equivalent for blood as containing a
sacred life. Thus to eat a kid seethed in its mother's milk might be
taken as an equivalent to eating 'with the blood,' and be forbidden to
the Hebrews[95] along with the bloody sacraments of the heathen."
[92] See references, in W. Robertson Smith's _Religion of the Semites_
(p. 252, note), to Burckhardt and to _K[=a]mil_.
[93] _Blood Covenant_, pp. 10, 11.
[94] _Relig. of the Sem._, p. 204, note; also _Kinship and Marriage in
Early Arabia_, pp. 149, 150.
[95] Exod. 23 : 19; 34 : 26; Deut. 14 : 21.
Milk has been employed instead of blood, and again of salt, for
transfusion in case of declining life from hemorrhage.[96] This would
seem to justify the belief that milk and blood alike represent life in
popular thought.
[96] Quain's _Dict. of Medicine_, art. "Transfusion of Milk."
A favorite experiment among young folks is to bring life to dead flies
by covering them with salt. When flies are drowned purposely, or by
accident, if one is taken from the water apparently dead, and laid
on the table, or on a plate, and covered with common salt, in a few
seconds the fly will creep out from under the salt, and soon fly away
as if unharmed. Other flies in the same condition, not treated with
salt, remain as dead. This has been tried by succeeding generations of
young folks, and it is one of the folk-lore facts in support of the
idea that salt is life.
It may, of course, be that the absorbent power of salt clears the
trachea of the fly, and thus permits the restoration of the natural
breathing. Of course, there is some explanation of the phenomenon; but
the fact remains that the common mind has been affected by such things
in the direction of the belief that salt is life in a peculiar sense.
After the foregoing pages were already in type, it was cabled as news
from London that an English mechanic claimed to have discovered a
method of resuscitating persons who have been drowned. He proposed to
cover the entire body of the person taken from the water with dry salt,
which is supposed to absorb the moisture, and thus draw the water from
the lungs and permit the air again to circulate freely. He claimed to
have revived a recently drowned cat, after letting it remain under salt
for thirty minutes; and that a drowned dog was thus restored in two
hours.
This is simply the folk-lore idea of bringing the dead to life by the
application of salt as life. Like many another folk-lore idea, it is
deserving of attention because of some possible basis of truth below
the idea, apart from the question of fact in connection with the claim.