The modern treatment of diseases of the kidney / by Prof. Dujardin-Beaumetz ; translated from the fifth French edition by E.P. Hurd.

Date:: 1888

Credit: The modern treatment of diseases of the kidney / by Prof. Dujardin-Beaumetz ; translated from the fifth French edition by E.P. Hurd. 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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$\ after each new addition, if a drop, taken up on a pipette and placed in a porcelaine cup gives a yellow precipitate with a drop of the test liquid. When you have obtained this pre- cipitate, you count the number of drops employed, then you subtract from this number the figure 3, and the remainder represents as many times 30 centigrammes of albumen per litre as you now have left of drops.* [Mr. Guy Stephen’s modification of this test is suflficient for all practical purposes. You first acidulate the urine with acetic acid, then add, drop by drop, the double iodide (see the above formula No. i). This will give a precipitate when there is only one grain of albumen to a quart of water.] Luton’s test is based on the readiness with which an al- buminous precipitate dissolves in a solution of tartaric acid. He measures exactly 10 cub. cent, of urine, and coagulates the albumen by heat in a test tube. Then he takes up in a pipette graduated in cubic centimetres and tenths of a centimetre a certain quantity of a solution of tartaric add, of the strength of one gramme to 10 cub. centimetres; then he instills this solu- tion, drop by drop, into the urine under examination, heating the mixture from time to time over a lamp, till the albuminous precipitate has entirely disappeared. He then reads off on the pipette the number of cubic centimetres of the solution or fractions of a centimetre, that have been used. By this operation, frequently repeated, you obtain what Luton calls the albuminimelric curve of the patient, and you are enabled to determine whether the patient is getting better or worse, and the results of the treatment, (Luton, “ On a New Method of Dosing Albumen,” Union Med., Sept., 1879). Mehu’s quantitative method is called the phenic acid test. He makes use of the following solution: • Bull. Gen. de Ther., t. xcii, p. 308. X$