In human blood, salt is a most important constituent; where there is disease, there is a diminution of salt, with corresponding nervous depression, and the individual experiences a want of power: if this want continues for any length of time, the health is gradually undermined; the blood loses its richness and is deprived of its vitalising property; various symptoms finally show themselves, and probably develop into some phenomena of a serious significance—all, indeed, indicative that the system is deficient of a most important essential in its economy. These symptoms may prognosticate the approach of various diseased conditions, partly owing to the habits, constitution, or surroundings of the patient. In all morbid conditions, and particularly in those which owe their origin to an unhealthy state of the blood, we may, to a considerable extent, be certain that there is a deficiency of the chloride of sodium. In proof of this, patients never, as a rule, object to salt; they actually relish it. Why? Because there is a deficiency, and nature intuitively excites the desire. We often find that patients refuse sugar; indeed the very mention of it produces a feeling of nausea and extreme disgust: with salt it is entirely different; they take it, and, in most cases, enjoy it in the same way that fever-stricken patients long for, and relish, a draught of cold water, _if_ they are able to obtain it. Were the human race once deprived of the chloride of sodium, even for a limited period of time, we should not only lose a natural healthful incentive for our food, but disease, with all her attendant miseries, would spread with such relentless impetuosity as would defy, and even paralyse, the efforts of the most skillful physician, the ingenuity of the surgeon, and the scientific improvements and hygienic precautions of the sanitarian.[53] The strength and vigour of manhood would fade as if blasted by disease, food would act as a poison; the blood would not be replenished with the salt which it requires, and consequently our skins would soon be covered with corruption; our cattle would die, our crops would be nipped in the bud; the air would be full of offensive insects; the soil would become foul and barren, the sea a waste of stagnant waters; and all the beautiful productions of nature would wither and decay, and our glorious earth would degenerate into a hideous solitude, solely inhabited, very probably, by monsters horrible to behold, and more repulsive than those gigantic reptiles which once roamed by the dreary marshes of an incomplete world. Those who take pleasure in decrying the inimitable works of nature, and affirm that they are provocative of evil, can only support their arguments by brazen assertions and subtle paralogisms.