Report on the first eighteen months of the fourth yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair.

  • Blair, Daniel.
Date:
[1856]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the first eighteen months of the fourth yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair. 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.

    21/96 (page 19)
    Hospital, 4tli of December, 1852), and Feliciana de Jesus (in Colonial Hospital, Sth of December, 1852). The measurements were made with Ross's micrometer eye-piece, and show the greatest length and breadth of each cast observed, in parts of an inch. Chugg's were -j-J-o x -^l^, •rrrr x tU x tA^. ^ x ttttt- tt^ x tIu <rrr- Holmas's were TT^x^^, -^^x^i^, gi^x^^^ ^x^i^, Tii3-x-nrW- Feliciana de Jesus' were -^-^ x ^ x ^^-j, ^fsr x ^-h^, 2TT x iri^; tube- casts are so soluble, not only in liquor potasaas, but also in ammonia (though mox-e slowly), it is necessary to look for them before decom- position of the urine takes place. The scanty, acid, amber-coloured urine, of oily consistency, in the> last stages of yellow fever, is always highly coagulable, but contains no tube casts, and is loaded with mucous corpuscles. It is very common, before the urine becomes albuminous, in using the nitric acid test, to perceive considerable effervescence, although the urine be acid, and no carbonate of ammonia can be suspected as being present. It is likely due to the decomposition of uric acid, or urea, by nitric acid, while the urine is heated. Is the effervescence in such cases du& to an excess of one or other of these; or is it a normal condition, and are the instances of ffon-effervesoence due to the deficiency of either? Whenever urine has been set up and examined for uric acid, it has always been found. But, except in the case of Profine Martinez, before referred to, I recollect of no instance in Avhich it has been found as a sediment. In Martinez' case, it was on the tenth day of his illness on which it was observed, and the deposit was copious. In the case of Morgan (Seaman's Hospital, September, 1852), his post-mortem urine Avas examined b ith for urea and uric acid. The hydrochloric acid test discovered the latter, but no urea could be detected, although, in the single opportunity for experiment which occurred during life, it was found to be copious. The specific gravity of the urine duriug life was 1-023 at 85°. The sediment was loaded with tube-casts. When heated, the coagulum occupied more than a quarter of the space in the tube. When the albumen was separated by filtration, the urine yielded nitrate of urea so copiously, that it became solid. Yet the urine found in his bladder after death did not yield a ti-ace. On the same day that Morgan's urine was examined for urea, Gilmey's, also, was tested for the same. The coagulum of his urine occupied upwards of a third of the space in the tube, and about one half of the specimen tried for nitrate of urea became solid: it ajjpearing, from these two experiments, as if the quantity of urea present was in inverse ratio to the albumen. In two or three experiments for phosphoric acid, it was found abundant in yellow-fever urine. The observer of this description of urine cannot but be struck by the rarity of the presence of crystalline bodies in it. After a time he ceases to expect them. There were only six oases in which, during the active course of the disease, triple phosphates wore found. There was one case in which a copious sediment of urate of ammonia was present, with the urine still acid. This was in one of the two cases of the Livonia before referred to, in which the red patches appeared on the skin. After con- valescence, the albumen was generally replaced by the earthy salts and