An inquiry into the nature and treatment of diabetes, calculus, and other affections of the urinary organs : with remarks on the importance of attending to the state of the urine in organic diseases of the kidney and bladder : and some practical rules for determining the nature of the disease from the sensible and chemical properties of that secretion / by William Prout.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the nature and treatment of diabetes, calculus, and other affections of the urinary organs : with remarks on the importance of attending to the state of the urine in organic diseases of the kidney and bladder : and some practical rules for determining the nature of the disease from the sensible and chemical properties of that secretion / by William Prout. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    34/350 (page 16)
    These I find, by well-known methods, to consist essentially of the lit hate of ammonia, and sometimes of the lithate of soda. They owe their colour partly to the colouring; matter of the urine, to be described hereafter, and partly (in some instances apparently almost entirely) to the purpurates of the same bases. I acknowledge that it is difficult, or indeed almost impossible, to prove these latter points by direct experimentbut the following observations will, I think, place their truth beyond a doubt. When pure lithate of ammonia is diffused through fresh healthy urine, it attracts to itself a portion of the colouring matter of that fluid, and falls down in the state of a yellowish powder. But if the least quantity of a solution of an alkaline purpurate be added to the urine, such is the affinity of the lithate of ammonia for this colouring substance, that it immediately attracts the purpurate to itself, and assumes the form of a red or pink powder, more or less deep, and varying in tint according to the purpu- rate employed. From these observations it is evident that, if ever the purpurates exist in the urine when amorphous sediments are precipitated from it, these sediments must necessarily become more or less tinged by them. To establish the point in question, there- fore, we have now only to render it probable that the purpurates do exist in the urine under certain cir- cumstances of disease. I have shown elsewhere,* that the pink and late-