Google is still my friend, but it just gave me a headache…so:
How widespread were/are saltmines?
Were they used to punish real or imagined enemies of the state
because they were more disgusting to work than, say, coalmines?
Interestingly, to work at the coalface is a good thing, but to work
( or be sent to ) the saltmine is highly perjorative.
Were the salt workings widespread? You know, basically European or worldwide?
No cites… but I know there are huge salt mines below Detroit, and I think they may still be active (I found pics of them last year when I was writing something about the Law of Definite Proportions, explaining that the NaCl in the huge salt deposits in the mines has the same composition as a single grain of salt)…
I don’t get it. What else would you expect?
This map:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mapdata/miscell.pdf
Shows the distribution of salt mines, in addition to mines for other industrial minerals, in the contiguous 48 United States.
This link:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mapdata/
Will find you similar maps for other ores and industrial minerals.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I’ll give a quick answer to this: people think calcium carbonate from coral or other sea creatures is somehow different than calcium carbonate from an antacid tablet. I don’t get it either–I’ve known the Law of Definite Proportions so long that it seems natural to me (which I guess it should, since it’s a natural law 
)–but people don’t always understand that a chemical formula is the same regardless of the source (I believe I went on to give examples of other places you find NaCl, but I can’t remember right now; if I were rewriting it now, I’d probably use the CaCO3 example).
Uh, OK. I suspected you meant as much but, similarly, thought it just too obvious.
Now I don’t agree with this but usually they are not saying the formula is different but rather the body doesn’t ABSORB the calcium as well. Thus you need to take more it passes thru your system unused.
There is one informercial where the guy takes his powder vitamins, minerals etc and mixes it with water. Then he puts a hole bunch of capsules of vitamins etc in a glass of water and stirs them. Then he goes…“See they don’t disolve”
In Russia (both Czarist and Soviet), salt mines were used as one of the penal colonies. It was not that mining salt was that much worse than mining coal, but that coal-mining was always associated with earning a living while salt mining was associated with slave labor.
If you are ever in Poland you can visit the salt mine at Wieliczca, near Cracow.This runs for miles and includes a chapel carved out out of the salt complete with statues. There used to be a sanatorium in these mines which treated people with asthma and other respiratory problems. Other mones that can be visited in Europe are located near Salzburg in Austria.
You don’t have to go that far, Rayne Man. The Salt Museum is in Cheshire and there are still working salt mines in the county.
The mine in Salzburg (literally, Salt City) can indeed be toured (it’s actually on the German side, I think). There is a miners’ train that takes you down and then there is a boat trip across a subterranean lake. This was the inspiration for my best pun ever. I asked the guide if we could consider the boat to be a “saline ship”. He was German and didn’t get it, but the rest of the tourists cracked up.