The therapeutic action and application of the mineral waters of Aix-les-Bains, Savoy : a paper presented to the Section of Medicine of the British Medical Association at Brighton, Aug. 1886 / by Stanley M. Rendall.

  • Rendall, Stanley M.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The therapeutic action and application of the mineral waters of Aix-les-Bains, Savoy : a paper presented to the Section of Medicine of the British Medical Association at Brighton, Aug. 1886 / by Stanley M. Rendall. 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.

    6/16 (page 6)
    The action of the waters can be divided under two heads— * General and Local. Their action on the system generally is shown, by an augmented activity of the excretory functions (chiefly those of the kidneys and skin), to consist in an increase of the movements of assimilation and disassimilation. Owing to this increased activity of the sweat glands the actual amount of urine in the twenty-four hours is in many cases diminished, but its solid constituents are increased in amount. The urea and uric acid are both augmented, but the uric acid is so to a greater degree than the urea. This action is of importance as showing why these waters are so useful in the arthritic diathesis. The uric acid is found in the urine free, as shown by the presence of the characteristic lozenge-shaped crystals, and also in the form of urates. This increased excretion of uric acid is readily seen on taking specimens of the twenty-four hours’ urine, during the first day or two of the patient’s course of treatment, and then comparing it with specimens taken five or six days later, and again after similar intervals of a few days. Take, for example, an ordinary case under treatment for gout. The urine, at first normal in quantity, colour, and specific gravity, becomes, after a few days, more scanty, dark, troubled, and of a higher density, continues so to a lesser or higher degree, and gradually returns to its normal appearance and condition. A volumetric analysis of such a urine, when these changes are at the highest, shows an increase of uric acid from the normal forty or eighty centigrammes (the latter being a high percentage) up to one gramme, or one gramme twenty centigrammes per litre of urine. The urea is, as I have said, also increased, but to a less degree relatively than the uric acid, the amount varying from the normal up to forty or sixty grammes per litre. For the result of volu- metric analysis I am indebted to my colleague, Dr Demeaux. It will thus be seen that the action of the Aix waters in these cases is to cause the direct expulsion of the morbid element from the