A guide to the examination of the urine : designed chiefly for the use of clinical clerks and students / By J. Wickham Legg, M.D.

  • John Wickham Legg
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the examination of the urine : designed chiefly for the use of clinical clerks and students / By J. Wickham Legg, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    44/120 (page 32)
    CLINICAL IMPORT OF HEMOGLOBIN, Liquor potassae or liquor sodaa is added to the urine in a test tube, until a pronounced alkaline re- action is obtained, tlie mixture heated to the boil- ing point, and set aside for some time. The pre- cipitate of phosphates has a greenish to a reddish colour, when the urine contains hasmoglobin, me- th^moglobin, or haematin. The colour is due to the haematin, a product of the decomposition of h£emoglobin. Clinical Im]port. Hasmoglobin appears in m-ine^ in which no red blood corpuscles can be detected, in most cases of jaundice, in poisoning by sulph- uric acid, phosphorus, and arseniuretted hydro- gen. Also in malignant cases of the acute specific diseases, and in scurvy, haemoglobin may be found, without any corpuscles being detected. But little is known about the coloui'ing matters of the urine which have been named m'oha3matin, uroxanthin, haemapheein, &c. Indican is a con- stant constituent of the urine, and by boiling with mineral acids, is decomposed into sugar, indigo red, and indigo blue. With nitric acid, it imi- tates the reactions of the bile pigment (see p. 28.) Heller poui'S a few drachms of fuming hydro- chloric acid into a beaker glass and then adds