Dioscorides is a physician of Rome in the first century AD. He serves as a doctor in Nero's army and later writes De Materia Medici, perhaps the greatest tome of natural medicine ever known. He enthuses about salt.
Techniques of extracting salt from brine date to c. 6000 BCE in Romania and China. They forge trade routes to Neolithic Solnitsata by the Black Sea. Salt is taken from brine by vacuum evaporation using briquetage vessels.
This evolves to become part of the later process of vacuum distillation. Briquetage are coarse pottery pots made to be broken. Sherds of briquetage are evidence of ancient salt production.
The ancient Romans establish the Via Salaria, trade routes specificially designed around salt. The mineral is used as money, in rituals and even cuisine. Salt is first added to food about 5000 years ago.
The preservation and drying qualities of salt come to the attention of Diogenes, inspiring him to explore its healing properties and medical potential. He isn't the first.
The practice of rubbing salt into wounds is a form of torture practiced for centuries, but might have saved some lives by preventing infection. Salt is also an age-old folk treatment. Diogenes records his conclusions in detail.
He explains,
"... Mineral salt is the most useful — usually that which is without stones, white, transparent, thick and equally compacted — as well as ammonia salts, which are easily cut and have straight edges. Thick sea salt must be taken, white and even.
"The best is from Salamine in Cyprus, Megara, Sicily, and Africa. Salt from the lakes in these places is considered the best. The Phrygian is the strongest, also called Tattaean."
The Phrygians are an ancient Indo-European speaking people who inhabit central-western Anatolia.
"These salts all have similar properties - useful as an astringent, and to clean and dissolve, as well as repress, reduce the intensity of symptoms, and form scabs - only differing slightly.
"They are binding for rotten ulcers, and mixed with sebaceous treatments for psoriasis. They repress abnormal growths in the eyes, and consume pterygium [membrane on eye]."
"They take away other abnormal growths, are fit to put in suppositories, and smeared on with oil they remove weariness and oedema from dropsy.
Warm packs are made from them in little bags to ease pain. Rubbed on by the fire with oil and vinegar (until the person sweats) they lessen itching.
In the same way (rubbed on with honey and vinegar) they lessen lichen [skin disease with red pustules], parasitical skin diseases, leprosy, and a synanchic [abscessed] throat."
"For the tonsils and adenoids they are roasted with honey, and for spreading ulcers, apthas [small ulcers], and moisture of the gums they are applied burnt with polenta. For the strikes of scorpions they are used with flax seed ...
For the bites of vipers with origanum, honey and hyssop; for the horned viper with pitch, cedria or honey; and for the bites of centipedes or millipedes with honey and vinegar."
"For wasp stings, gnawing worms, white pustules in the head, the thymus, and tubercles [growths] they take it with calves’ suet.
With raisins, swines’ grease or honey they dissolve boils [inflammatory tumours]; and with origanum and fermented dough they ripen oedema of the genitals sooner."
"Pounded into small pieces and bound in a linen cloth dipped in vinegar and then bound to the wounds with bandages, they help those bitten by crocodiles.
With honey they help those bitten by venomous creatures, and bruises on the face. As an antidote for drinking the juice of poppy or eating mushrooms it is taken as a drink with vinegar and honey."
"They are used for dislocations with meal and honey; and applied with oil do not allow burns to blister. Salts are similarly applied to gout and earache with vinegar.
Smeared on with vinegar (or applied as a poultice with hyssop they stop erysipela [streptococcal skin infection] and creeping ulcers. They burn salts by throwing them into an ostracean [clay] jar, carefully closed so that they may not leap out, and then hidden in live coals until fully burnt."
"Some wrap the sales fossiles [mineral salt] with dough, place it under hot coals, and leave it alone until the dough has burnt. You may burn common salts as follows; wash them once in water and allow them to dry ...
... then put them into a corked ceramic pot and make a fire underneath, shaking the pot until the salt no longer leaps."
In modern medicine salt is known to help with the balance of electrolytes and fluids and carry nutrients into cells. It regulates acid-base balance, supports transfer of nerve impulses, helps regulate blood pressure and gastric acid secretion.
Drugs are often converted to chemical salts to ease dissolution, enhance absorption to the bloodstream and increase effectiveness. A drug can't have therapeutic effects unless absorbed so a salt form is used for some.
While humans need salt to live, signs of too much salt can include:
bloating
thirst
frequent urination
high blood pressure
headache
exhaustion
heart palpitations
Excess salt can also put stress on the kidneys. While their role includes excreting salt, the kidneys might not do so effectively. They may retain salt, causing swollen ankles and fluid accumulation around the heart and lungs.
Salt offers potential skin health benefits due to exfoliating and antiseptic qualities but is not advised for all skin types. People with sensitive or dry skin should keep it to a minimum in beauty treatments. If bathing in Epsom salts be sure to rinse off with clear water.
Drinking sea water or salt water comes with hazards. Human kidneys can produce only urine less salty than seawater. To eliminate the extra salt a person must urinate more water than ingested.
This ultimately leads to dehydration, causing symptoms like confusion, cramps, delusions and dizziness while thirst increases. Eventually the person dies. It's known in cases when shipwrecked sailors try to drink seawater to survive.
Salt has many benefits in improving food flavors, food preservation and healing sore throats in a gargle. It provides two of the electrolytes necessary for health, sodium and chloride.
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