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
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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.

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    that has been used at first and remove the uric acid it has retained, and in the same way they may be useful in mental depression; and they may, as I have said, completely prevent fatigue, and will relieve it and its myalgic pains when present. Salicylates also are very useful in some cases of asthma and in what are known as feverish colds. They will often relieve dyspepsia, especially if there is pain, and in what I have called gout of the intestines their effect is sometimes wonderful. Similarly in anaemia they are of use, and apparently pass the uric acid through the blood without allowing it to do any harm, and the same in paroxysmal haemoglobinuria and Eaynaud's disease, though in the attacks drugs belonging to the mercury and iodide class may be used in the first place. In albuminuria and Bright's disease salicylates when they increase the excretion of uric acid often make the mine scanty and the albumin appears to be increased; but I have never been able to satisfy myself by actual estimations that there was in these cases an absolute increase of albumen. Still, in these dis- eases I generally prefer drugs of the iodide class, and only use salicylates occasionally to clear out accumulated urates. Of the use of salicylates in rheumatism, glycosuria and diabetes, I need hardly say any more, and in gout I believe that they have only to be given in proper cases and in sufficient doses to have their powers fully appreciated. I am glad to see that professor Tyson, of Pennsylvania, considers them by far the best remedies in this disease. {Therapeutic Gazette, November 15, 1893.) It is not my purpose to go minutely into the drug treatment of each condition, for, in so far as any of these diseases are due to uric acid, the only real treatment is that by diet, which is both preventive and curative, while drugs for the most part (except the salicylates) relieve only for a time, and the trouble will return as soon as they are left off, and in not a few cases will be worse than if they had never been used. If any of the troubles in the first fourteen chapters are asso- ciated with a slow high tension pulse and scanty urine, the presumption is in favour of an excess of uric acid in the blood, and this and the urine may be examined : but if this is impossible drugs may be given which would have the effect of clearing the blood of uric acid and their effects observed; or, on the otber hand, caffeine or uric acid in some other form may be given to see