Book Review

Salt and Water in Culture and Medicine

N Engl J Med 1994; 330:1909-1910June 30, 1994

Article

Salt and Water in Culture and Medicine
By Poul Astrup, with Peter Bie and Hans Chr. Engell. 287 pp., illustrated. Copenhagen, Denmark, Munksgaard, 1993. DKK 350. ISBN: 87-16-11226-1

Does it interest you, dear reader, that the human use of salt began with the start of agriculture on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the seventh or eighth millennium B.C.; that before that the human need for salt was met by eating fish, birds, and mammals of various sizes; that the Egyptians used salt for embalming by packing bodies in it for one to two months before wrapping them in cloth; that sodium sulfate was first produced by Johann Rudolf Glauber (1604-1668), thus originating our present-day Glauber's salt; that Sir Humphry Davy, who first isolated sodium by applying electricity to a solution of sodium hydroxide, “danced about the room in ecstatic joy” at his accomplishment; that Henry Cavendish, the discoverer of hydrogen, studied at Cambridge for four years, left without passing any examinations, and was later reluctant to leave his house except to attend meetings of the Royal Society; and that Thomas Latta of Leith, Scotland, was the first to administer intravenous infusions of water containing sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate to patients with cholera?

If the answer to the question or any of its parts is yes, you should obtain a copy of Salt and Water in Culture and Medicine, because these facts and thousands like them have been woven together by Astrup and his colleagues, Bie and Engell, into an appealing historical tapestry that portrays humanity's preoccupation with salt and water from the earliest times to now.

The book consists of six chapters entitled “The History of Salt,” “The History of Water,” “The Physiological and Clinical History of Water and Salt,” “The History of Fluid Infusion,” “A Brief History of Blood Transfusion and Milk Infusion,” and “Development of Analytical Techniques for Evaluation of Walter/Salt Metabolism.” All the chapters are chock-full of information. References are provided for each chapter. However, references are not provided for the numerous facts that are presented; thus, the intellectually curious reader may be frustrated by not being able to determine the sources directly. In general, the prose is lively and attractive, but there are moments of awkwardness and grammatical looseness -- a consequence, no doubt, of inadequate translation from Danish to English.

Finally, there is the matter of the comprehensiveness of the book. As Astrup notes in the preface, “The full medical and non-medical history of water and salt deserves a separate work in several volumes authored by experts, scholars, and artists giving each volume such profundity, value, and perfection as to make comparison with a Gothic cathedral appropriate.” Gothic cathedrals are always a long time in coming, and the salt-and-water edifice will be no different.

In the meantime, Astrup and his colleagues have constructed for us a marvelous and authentic chapel by which the worshipers will be well pleased and well served.

William B. Blythe, M.D.
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC 27599