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] [39] See _Blood Covenant_, pp. 115-126, with references to Pliny, and to Roussel, and others. See, also, Dr. Thomas G. Morton's _Transfusion of Blood_; W. H. Howell's _American Text Book of Physiology_, p. 362. [40] See Dr. Bartholow's _Hypodermatic Medication_, pp. 126-142. [41] See, for example, _Capital Operations without Anæsthesia and the Use of Large Saline Infusion in Acute Anæmia_, a paper read by Dr. Buchanan before the National Association of Railway Surgeons, pp. 18, 79. 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 becoming acquainted with the savor of salt.[43] This carries back the traditional discovery of salt to the age when blood was first forbidden as food. [42] Gen. 9 : 4. [43] Price's _Mohammedan History_, II., 458. It was long ago claimed by some that the red corpuscles of the blood are dependent for their color and vitality on the presence of salt, and recent scientific experiments and discussion have continued in the direction of the question thus raised.[44] [44] See W. H. Howell's _American Text Book of Physiology_, p. 334.