Uric acid as a factor in the causation of disease : acontribution to the pathology of high arterial tension, headache, epilepsy, mental depression, paroxysmal hæmoglobinuria and anæmia, Bright's disease, diabetes, gout, rheumatism, and other disorders / by Alexander Haig.

  • Haig, Alexander, 1853-1924.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Uric acid as a factor in the causation of disease : acontribution to the pathology of high arterial tension, headache, epilepsy, mental depression, paroxysmal hæmoglobinuria and anæmia, Bright's disease, diabetes, gout, rheumatism, and other disorders / by Alexander Haig. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/420 (page 10)
    But the total uric acid is increased probably by about 123 grs. swallowed intentionally for experimental purposes, and say some 300 grs. which were stored in the body before the estimation of the excretion began. (Thus I have calculated from the per- centage of urate found in the various organs and tissues after death multiplied by the weight of these tissues in the body that a man of 12 stone would probably have 300 grs. in his various organs and tissues. And as this is probably not an over-estimate I have put down 300 grs. as the quantity in my own tissues, but it must be understood that the calculations I am now making are provisional merely and subject to revision as our knowledge becomes more accurate.) Subtracting the 123 grs. thus accounted for from the total of 14,353 grs. w^ get 13,930 grs., as representing the excretion of uric acid in the above 1,281 days, apart from the urate which was intentionally introduced, and apart from that which was already present in the body when the experiment began. This gives a daily excretion of 10.8 grs. of uric acid and a relation of uric acid to urea of 1—29. But the daily excretion equals the daily formation plus the daily introduction of urate ready formed in the food; and though my food is probably much poorer in urate than that of persons on ordinary diet with an ordinary allowance of butcher's meat, soups and meat extracts, still, there seems to be little doubt that my food does contain some uric acid or other members of the xanthin group equivalent to it. Let us say, for the sake of getting even figures, that I introduce with my food 1.8 grs. of uric acid per day, and subtracting this from the 10.8 grs. of daily excretion, we get 9 grs. of uric acid as the actual quantity of the substance daily produced in my body out of nitrogen introduced into it in other forms, the remainder of this nitrogen furnishing about 315 grains of urea. My weight during the course of this investigation has varied but little from 120 lbs., so that urea is about 2.6 grs. per lb., and uric acid actually formed .075 grs. per lb. During this period I have been on a diet of fruit, vege- tables, and vegetable products, plus so much milk, fish and eggs as sufficed to keep my urea about this level, but even on this I have introduced, we are supposing, about 1.8 grs. of uric acid per day = .015 gr. per lb. of body weight, or .6 gr. per 100 grs. of urea.