Salt in Perspective

Nature Vol. 278 26 April 1979 Spring books supplement 811 matter, but this does not seem to have other hand, for science itself the book existence of a salt industry. The largest been the casew ith Gay-Lussac. makes more than the "small contri salt industries, however, were even The author declares "this biography bution" suggested by the author. It is tually those based on deep-mined will help give flesh and bones to one a solid piece of research meticulously rock-salt, the demand being that of the of the names found in science text executed with tables, footnotes, biblio new chemical industries. (One of books but, in so doing, it may also graphies, appendix and indexes, and is several sections contributiing to the make a small contribution to a fuller a substantial addition to our under wider history of technology is that deal understanding of the development of standing of the development of ing with drilling.) science". I believe that he is both chemistry at an important stage of its Before salt entered its modern phase ov,er-sanguine and too modest. For me, history. At £15 one might have ex of being the raw material for sodium at least, Gay-Lussac never emerges as pected the publishers to allow the compounds and for chlorine, it was one a rounded human personality. Here author mo,re illustrations than the soli of the most important means of sheer and there we catch glimpses of a some tary portrait that appears as the front survival, being an invaluable food pre what unbending autocrat tending to ispiece. But we must be grateful to servative. Lynn White has drawn atten inspire respect rather than affection Gay-Lussac for having contributed so tion to the importance of improved and ,himself under pressure from a much to chemical science and to second-class protein supplies to the financially ambitious wife. But in fact Mar1rice Crosland for an illuminating development of mediaeval technical we learn little of his family life, his and soundly-constructed essay in scien vigour, but the argument can be con hobbies ("no great interest in the tific biography. D tinued: new technical improvements arts") or his religion (Enlightenment in salt manufacture improved the avail Colin A. Russell is Reader in the History humanism). We do not even know the of Science and Technology at the Open ability of meat and fish protein and so circumstances of his death. On the University, Milton Keynes, UK. progressively helped to bring about the energising of Western Europe which ushered in what we can still usefully chemical industry as a whole and the call Modern Times. But even greater concomitant expansion of large-scale expansion was to come as salt-mining Salt in manufacturing industry and long dis benefited from the steam-engine and tance bulk transport does he depict the development of iron machinery. perspective salt as a key chemical raw material. Multhauf uses an enlightening ana Salt -is a universal necessity. Without logy: comparing early salt-mining to Frank Greenaway an adequate intake, direct or indirect, an agricultural pursuit because of its .normal health cannot be maintained. often seasonal character, and showing Yet salt is not so widespread a natural how it was transformed into a non Neptune's Gift: A History of Common substance as might seem from its in seasonal industry. By 1850 the alkali Salt. By R. P. Multhauf. Pp. 325. variable association with animal life. industry took up about a third of Bri (Johns Hopkins University Press: Bal It has to be sought by human and tish salt production. In the United timore and London, 1978.) £15.75. animal alike; so since ancient times, States, the new meat-packing industry it has had the scarcity value which called for a great deal, but industrial "SALT was known to the Ancients". So makes for trading and taxation. A his ised food preservation was much less began for fifty years the lectures on tory of adminiistration could be written important elsewhere. Direct culinary the halogens given by an imperishable around salt, "an ideal article for fiscal use levelled off about 1850, using about Oxford don. Robert Multhauf might management". There was a universal half of the British total at that time. well have begun his excellent book demand for it, its supply could not be The industry expanded, however, and with the same words, conveying as left to chance and it was a fairly easy the second half of the book explains they do the antiquity and continuity of commodity to control, as was found why. The nineteenth-century chemical his subject. A book which is primarily not only in Europe but also in China industry had soda as one of its pillars historical in intent, but concludes with and elsewhere. The salt tax, the with salt as the base, and the vast in a reference dated 1976 is, to say the gabelle, was hated in France and seems crease in the use of salt-derived least, unusual, but Multhauf is an un to have been one of the precipitating chlorine in solvents, plastics, pesticides usual man. causes of the French Revolution. How and the like. Multhauf points out how He has been a man of action and ever, one must not take too simple a in the case of salt, as with so many saw the world before entering on a view of the historic role of salt taxes, other substances, the dominant indus career at the Museum of History and which came and went in a very irregu try is the automobile industry. using Technology at the Smithsonian Institu lar way in the United States, and were the plastics and solvents, which need tion which made him so well known much confused in Indian history by the chlorine, in direct manufacture, hut as a leading historian of chemistry. His close relationship of salt with the also using very large amounts of salt reach is long and his grasp firm. This important saltpetre industry and trade. as such for road treatment in winter. work on salt has all the fluency and The extraction of salt is an excep The book is well produced, particu density of significant detail which make tional example of the stability and larly well documented, and equipped his earlier work The Origins of Chem continuous survival of techniques with valuable maps and statistical istry so valuable. which, though crude and simple, were tables. The book falls into two main sec effioient enough to render modification Salt was known to the ancients, hut, tions: "The Age of Culinary Salt" unnecessary for centuries. There were in spite of its importance, is little con and "The Era of Chemical Salt". The several methods, some of which might sidered today in the perennial discus transition is set later than would seem be found in use within a short distance sion of the effects of technology. obvious~that is, in the nineteenth of each other: evaporation of seawater Neptune's Gift should do much to rather than the seventeenth century. by fire or solar heat, surface mining, equip us to see it in its correct pers Multhauf sees the food preservative deep mining, leaching, and so on. Sim pective. ,1 role of salt as its more important ple pottery pans for boiling down brine Frank Greenaway is Keeper of the Depart feature well into the nineteenth cen were so customary that their fragmen ment of Chemistry at the Science Museum, tury. Only with the expansion of the tary remains are good evidence of the London, UK. IC Macmillan Journals Ltd 1979 .

Load more