Medicine: Case of trie Substitute Salt

People with high blood pressure, or some diseases of the heart and kidneys, are often forbidden to use salt. Last spring the Foster-Milburn Co. of Buffalo thought it had found something harmless that would give food a salty flavor. The new product, Westsal, contained lithium chloride (table salt is sodium chloride).

Early this month, doctors at a Manhattan hospital suspected that the substitute salt might have played a part in the death of a patient with heart disease. The Food & Drug Administration began experimenting, and found that heavy doses of lithium chloride killed...