The grotesque aberrations of thought which have so prolifically generated such an incongruous medley of medico-social phantasmagoria, though considered by their promoters as wonderful scientific projections, are rendered more ridiculous than they really are, by their wild and unreasonable denunciations of those who do not happen to coincide with their farcical puerilities and whimsical crudities; and their intolerant followers, with considerable more zeal than discretion, promulgate their doctrines with voluminous additions and preposterous assertions—_mentis gratissimus error_. These parodies of science have exerted as yet no material influence on modern thought, though there is a visible impress observable here and there; and they doubtless will ultimately collapse, like alchemy and other illusions of a bygone age, and in due time will fall as ignominiously before the resistless onslaughts of true science and knowledge, as those deceptive will-o’-the-wisps were finally extinguished, after whisking about for some centuries, by the calm, dignified, and logical condemnation of philosophical and scientific investigation. Need I remind my reader that I am referring to spiritualism, homœopathy, vegetarianism, and various other bastard distortions of science, though their purblind believers may regard them as legitimate offspring, and therefore deserving of due respect and consideration. Such imaginative plerophory is invariably antagonistic to scientific conclusions and common-sense principles, beside being redundant of inane folly and trivial hyperbole. One of the peculiar crazes of the day, though it is not so universal as those to which I have just referred, is the unhealthful and insensate antipathy to salt, which has infatuated, in a greater or lesser degree, the several strata of society: some going so far as to proscribe it altogether, whilst others use it as if it were destructive to life, or at least subversive of health, and others assert that it originates disease! Some time ago I saw a letter in a temperance journal (we know that the advocates of total abstinence are frequently guilty of degrading their good cause by descending to frivolity), advising total abstention from salt; the writer, with amusing self-complacency, accused it of producing evils of an astounding nature—such is the latitude of pragmatical ignorance and silly egotism. The palpable absurdity of such an argument must be apparent even to the most careless thinker; it is with the view of exposing such a fallacy, both injurious and irrational, that I have written this treatise, and have been prompted to do so more especially as I find such ridiculous notions find great favour with those from whom better things ought to be expected.