THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "SALT CURE."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 52, 2 March 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "SALT CURE."

(By a Medical Contributor.)

Some humorous American has been making extracts about a salt cure from ancient volumes of the "Lancet" and selling them as up-to-date "copy." The experiments on dogs iv Chicago, about which there has been so much discussion, are precisely as Dr. Ward Richardson performed them some some twenty years ago in London. There is nothing new about this great salt cure. It is tised not only iv all our hospitals, but by hundreds of doctors in private practice. It was used as long ago as 1848 when cholera was in London; and, according to medical records, Sir C. Wren successfully practised it in 1656! But it is a wonderful remedy, nevertheless, for it brings the dead to life. When a person loses about one-third of his blood he falls into a state of collapse, and ten chances to one his heart will stop beating and he will die. Yet he has still plenty of blood in his body to support life. Why does he die? The veins ordinarilj' are full of blood, and tfceir wails are in a state of tension, like a pneumatic tyre. Consequently they are constantly discharging the blood into the heart, and the heart is pumping it back into the arteries after it has been purified in the lungs. But when severe bleeding occurs the veins collapse just like a punctured tyre. Little or no blood passes into the heart, and so the heart stops pumping. This, of course, means death. What the dying man needs is more fluid in his veins. About two thousand years ago it was discovered that the blood of an animal could be injected into the veins of such a patient and his life saved. But the blood of animals is a dangerous fluid, and so various other things came to be used. One of these was pure water. Pure water, however, injures the blood remaining in the veins. The blood contains a large quantify of various kinds of salts, especially chloride of sodium, or common table salt. It was but a short step to mix salt with the water, and this was done for the first time by Libavious in the year 1615.

The exact mixture used by doctors now is the following:—

Chloride of sodium (common salt), one drachm; chloride of potassium, six grains; phosphate of sodium, three grains; carbonate of sodium, twenty grains; alcohol, one drachm; distilled water, one pint. Suppose, now, a man is stabbed or crushed by machinei\y and loses a lot of blood. When he arrives at the hospital he is insensible. His heart is barely beating and can scarcely be felt. In a few minutes he will be no more. The surgeon takes half a pint or upwards of the above mixture and warms it to blood heat, opens a vein near the elbow, gets a glass syringe and injects the fluid into the vein.

In a few seconds the heart is filled once more, it begins to beat more and more strongly, and within three or four minutes the man recovers consciousness. The salt mixture is not at all nourishing. It is no elixir of life. It merely increases the bulk of the blood so that the heart is filled and gets a. "purchase" for its action.

Some years ago a boy of fifteen was taken to the London Hospital, and on arrival he was at the last gasp. He had been caught in the machinery of a mill and so badly torn that he lost nearly half of his blood. No drugs, hot water bottles, brandy or anything of the kind could save him; but when a few ounces of salt solution were injected into* his blood vessels he became conscious immediately and made a good recovery-

At Guy's Hospital men and women, apparently dead, have been frequently brought back to health by this curious remedy. And even a dying child, aged nine months, was recently restored to life" at the Children's Hospital in Great. Ormond-street.

For cholera the salt solution has proved an excellent cure. In this disease the blood becomes as thick as tan and ceases to flow through the blood vessels. A pint or two of saline solution brings the blood back to its natural fluid condition, but it does not always save the life of the 2~>atient.

Sir Spencer Wells used this remedy to a greater extent in 1848----49. Sir B. Ward Richardson used it in the case of a woman who was actually lying dead from cholera. In a few minutes she sat up in bed and made her will, but after a little while she died again. A renewal of the injection, however, restored her once more, and she was brought back to life in this way no fewer than six times; but the cholera had the mastery in the end.

As to the experiments on dogs that have been recorded as something altogether new, they have been performed by the thousand all over the world for the last fifty years. The late Dr. Wooldridge, of London, bled a dog to death, and by injecting a quantity of salt solution, brought him so quickly to life again that the animal ran about the laboratory in half an hour and ate a hearty meal as if nothing had happened-

To anyone seeing such an experiment for the first time it would appear that the salt possessed some wonderful invigorating quality. This is what some unscrupulous American is trying to make the public believe. But all the saline solution does is to offer resistance to the heart. It deceives the heart into beating, plain water would do the same, but for the curious fact that it paralyses muscle. The salt merely prevents the water from paralysing the muscle. But let no one be induced to believe that salt is an elixir of life. A certain small quantity is necessary. But to take more than one usually does at meals would do actual harm.—"Daily Mail."