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.

    43/350 (page 25)
    tion,* I have attended a little more closely to the ap- pearance of this principle in the urine, and am disposed to believe, in consequence, that it is the cause of the precipitation of lithic acid gravel from the urine more frequently than any other acid. I do not mean to say, that it is the immediate cause of the precipi- tation of this acid, for in most instances it acts like all powerful acids do under similar circumstances, namely, by liberating the weaker acids, which are thus enabled to act in their turn, and separate those having still weaker affinities than themselves. Thus, in the present instance, the muriatic acid may be supposed to sepa- rate the lactic, while the latter precipitates the lithic, &c. If this opinion be well founded, as I believe is the case, the muriatic acid may be considered as of very great importance, not only in a pathological but a physiological point of view; for if the muriatic acid found in the urine in such instances be supposed to have its origin in the digestive organs, we see at once the reason why the deposition of gravel is so liable to be influenced by the derangements in gene- ral, and more especially by the acidity, of the stomach. Another circumstance of a negative character in- deed, connected with the present subject, seems to corroborate this opinion. In several cases (in short, in every one in which I have made the experi- ment) I have found the quantity of muriatic acid exceedingly diminished, and sometimes even al- most entirely wanting, in the urine of persons at * See Philos, Trans. 1824.