THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1523, 28 February 1901, Page 35

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE “SALT CURE.” 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 in Chicago, about which there has been so' much discussion, are precisely as Dr Ward Richardson performed them some twenty years ago in London. There is nothing new about this great salt cure. It is used not only in 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 1 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 aboxxt one-third of his blood, he falls into a state of collapse and, ten chances to zuie, his. heart will stop heating and he will die. Yet he has still plenty of blood in bis body to support life. Why does he die? The veins ordinarily are full of blood, and their Avails 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 quantity 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 machinery, 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 ivarms it to blood heat, opens a vein near the elbow, gets a glass syringe, and injects the fluid 1 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, hotwater 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 o-ood recovery. ' G At Guy s Hospital men and women, apparently dead, have been frequently brought back to health by this curious remedy. And even a dying cixild, aged nine months, was recently restorecLto 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 tar and ceases to flow through the bloodvessels. 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 patient. Sir Spencer Wells used this remedy to a great 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 eat a hearty meal as if nothing had happened. To any one 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 wa.er would do the same, but for the curious fact that it paralyses muscle. The salt merely prevents the water from paralysing th© 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.”