Objections founded on imperfect, or an affectation of knowledge, are not worth the trouble of confuting, even if they be supported by a fair amount of intelligence; but when the opponents of salt begin to base their assertions upon science, and demur on medicinal, dietetic, and physiological grounds, then we must meet them armed with similar weapons to those they have chosen, with the handling of which they are but imperfectly acquainted, and which therefore recoil upon them in such a way as prove that though they may be shrewd, they are but badly informed and credulous scientists. At the present day the science of physiology has arrived at such a pitch of perfection that there is not a single secretion, tissue, or organ of the body, with the exception of the spleen, which has not been investigated, and the functions divulged and made so plain that it is quite divested of that apparent mystery which formerly enshrouded it; though our kind friends, the anti-vivisectionists, would willingly adopt the most unjust measures to prevent the study of life from being more perfect than it already is: they protest with well-feigned horror at a frog or a rabbit, under the influence of chloroform, being experimented upon for the benefit of humanity, while they see, without allowing a sign of disapprobation to escape from them, an inoffensive hare chased to death for the amusement of gentility, and probably gloat over, with pleasure, the dying agonies of a stag: a sight which gratifies the somewhat questionable proclivities of refined and elegant ladies, who race their horses out of breath to gaze on the sanguinary scene. Had it not been for physiological research we should not have known that the chloride of sodium was such an important constituent in the animal economy; we should have been in utter ignorance of the science of life, and we should never have known how man is begotten, how developed, or how he dies. With regard to the two processes of decay and repair, or how the human organism, from a mere cell, gradually becomes a being highly organised, mentally as well as physically, we should have known nothing. Physiology has been a boon to humanity and an inexhaustible field of research to the scientific.