Urinary deposits : their diagnosis, pathology, and therapeutical indications / by Golding Bird.

Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Urinary deposits : their diagnosis, pathology, and therapeutical indications / by Golding Bird. 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.

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    the kidneys, although in some instances dependent only upon mere functional disturbance. In the former editions of this work, I stated that in a few rare instances, occurring chiefly in urine loaded with oxalate of lime, I had found it quite fluid whilst cold and gelatinizing when heated, retaining, how- ever, its transparency. This curious change being best observed when water is poured on the warmed urine, when the gelatinous mass floats for some seconds in the water before it completely dissolves. Recent observa- tions have led me to trace the cause of this to an abundant deposit of urate of ammonia, accompanying the oxalate, dissolving by the heat employed, and soon after separating as a gelatinous hydrate. 64. The optical properties of the urine have scarcely been applied to diagnosis, with the exception of the action saccharine urine exerts on polarised light, which has been proposed by M. Biot,15 and applied by M. Bouchardat10 to the detection of diabetes mellitus. It is quite out of place to notice here the theoretical action of diabetic urine on polar- ised light; for an account of which I would refer the reader to works especially devoted to the investiga- tion of physical phenomena :17 and now simply content myself with pointing out the readiest mode of applying this property to diagnosis. Let a mirror a, composed of half a dozen pieces of thin window glass, be fixed to an arm of a common re- tort-stand. A brass tube b, open at