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.