SALT-WATER DRINKERS.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2890, 21 May 1878, Page 2

SALT-WATER DRINKERS.

The Journal de la Socie*fe de Me*decine de Caen et^ de Calvado publishes the following account of salt-water drinkers, taken from en account of a voyage to the 1. Oceaiio Islands, by M. Jouan, a ship's captain, and sent by him to a medical man' at Caen. These remarkable people are met with on the madreporic atolls of the Pacißc, such as the Paumotori Islands, where there are neither brooks nor springs, and where the wells which have been dug yield only brackish water* The vegetation is limited to a few cocoanut trees, of which tbe milk, with sea-water constitutes the only drink of the natives. * It is a question how men can live when constantly using a liquid of which all bathers, who have perforce * swallowed a few drops,' know the disagreeable qualities. Is it an effect of habit, or a natural disposition, or characteristic of race P It is inexplicable; the fact, however, is affirmed by ' the - majority of navigators who have visited r those distant shores. Cook and Lr.perouse both mention it, and more recently Dupe-tit-Thouars has described the inhabitants of Easter Island as true amphibia, drinking sea : water without feeling any inconvenience from it. M. Jouan concludes his observations on the drinking of seawater by a fact-which he asserts to have, seen at the beginning of his seafaring career in 1838, while going to Mexico. At that time, he writes, steam navigation had not yet freed ships from the influences of calms and head-winds. There was no dis illing' apparatus, so that in long voyages it was necessary to be careful witb the water ; and in his ship, with the number on board nearly doubled by some troops they had to convey, and the prospect of not finding any water on the way', since they were only going to-blockade the coast without communicating with the shore, they were specially parsimonious in its use. Some sailors consequently began to drink sea-water, but were soon obliged to leave it off. One man' only persevered until the ship arrived at Mexico, when it was re-victualled with fresh water brought at great expense from Havannah. This man never complained of the sea-water; the only difference remarked in him was that he became more and more yellow.