Owing to the fact that stout and fat people perspire freely and profusely, and to a much greater extent when undergoing fatigue, they must necessarily lose a great amount of salt; for as it is held in solution by the liquor-sanguinis, which passes through the pores of the skin in the form of sweat (the word perspiration is not sufficiently emphatic when we are speaking of stout and fat individuals), it must naturally pass out with it, and thus they experience thirst and a desire for salt; which desire is strongly indicative of a healthy state of the secretions. If there is no wish for salt, then we may conclude that disease in some form or other is lurking unsuspected in the system, ready to break out, either by an act of indiscretion, poisoned atmosphere, or because of a taint of an hereditary character. We may compare this condition of things to a barrel of gunpowder, ready on the application of the faintest spark to ignite, and spread confusion and death far and wide, with a fury proportionate to the amount of the inflammatory material. If these people do not take salt with their food they allow their blood to become impoverished and more unhealthy than it already is, and their constitutions materially suffer in consequence, their skins are ultimately affected, the complexion frequently becomes sallow, and appears discoloured, and in some severe cases we have that skin disease called acnæ, indicative of the poor and unwholesome state of the blood; they are affected with intestinal parasites, they do not digest their food, their breath has a most disagreeable odour, very unmistakable, and they are more or less out of health. Those of a scrofulous habit require salt to a much greater extent than even the gross, because the blood of scrofulous or strumous persons does not possess its due proportion of salt; and the only way to make up for this deficiency is to use it freely, otherwise the system does not derive the support and nourishment from that source which vitalises the whole frame. We may justly infer that if the blood is deficient of a most important constituent the system must, as a matter of course, degenerate into a condition not only ready to receive disease, but into one which reduces the strength and undermines the nerve-power, and this in a scrofulous habit is fraught with serious consequences.