A clinical method for the quantitative estimation of uric acid in urine / by N.F. Surveyor.

  • Surveyor, N.F.
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: A clinical method for the quantitative estimation of uric acid in urine / by N.F. Surveyor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    J Reprinted, from the British A CLINICAL METHOD FOR THE QUANTITATIVE ESTIMATION OF URIC ACID IN URINE. By N. F. SURVEYOR, M.A., B.Sc., M.D.Bombay, M.R.C.P.Lond., D.P.H.Camb. Hon. Physician, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital. (From the F. D. Petit Laboratory, Grant Medical College, Bombay.) (For this research a grant was given by the Government of Bombay.) Various methods for the estimation of uric acid in urine have been devised which are, however, only useful for labora- tory workers, and require the use of several reagents and con- siderable technical skill. From amongst all the methods the simplest and fairly accurate one is the Gowland-Hopkins method; however, even this requires about 50 to 100 c.cm. of urine and various chemicals, and the result cannot be obtained within three to four hours at the earliest. The following method, which I have found to work satisfac- torily for over three years, will, I hope, recommend itself to others on account of its simplicity and fair amount of accuracy. For this method 5 to 10 c.cm. of urine is quite sufficient, and the only reagent required is a couple of tiny drops of pure hydrochloric acid; the drops must be so small that 50 such equal 1 c.cm. of the acid. This can be easily managed by using a capillary tube, drawn out in a blowpipe like the ordinary glass bristle used for bacteriological purposes. Five c.cm. of the urine are placed in a percentage centri- fugal tube and two drops of pure HC1 mixed with it. This tube is now immersed in a freezing mixture of salt and ice for about fifteen to twenty minutes. This freezes the urine, and the urates and uric acid are deposited in a dense opaque mass along with other salts. Even at this stage one can see whether the uric acid is scanty or not, as the frozen urine appears translucent when the urates are scanty, while it is milky, curdy, opaque even when the amount of uric acid is normal. Now this tube is removed from the freezing mixture and rapidly centrifugalized till the whole of the mass is liquefied. It must then be allowed to rest till it approaches the normal temperature of the room, then the percentage of the deposit is to be read off. This percentage is less than 0.5 per cent, when the amount of uric acid is less than 0.04 per cent, as estimated by Fokker’s or Gowland-Hopkins’s method. The Method.