Chemistry of urine : a practical guide to the analytical examination of diabetic albuminous, and gouty urine / Alfred H. Allen.

  • Alfred Henry Allen
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chemistry of urine : a practical guide to the analytical examination of diabetic albuminous, and gouty urine / Alfred H. Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/250 (page 9)
    CHARACTERS OF URINE. present the smell of the urine is at first like that of sweet-briar, but afterwards becomes offensive. Tur- pentine produces an odour like that of violets, and the essential oils of cubebs, copaiba, santal-wood, &c., when taken internally, communicate characteristic smells to the urine. On long ke.eping, or when it has undergone fermentation in the bladder, urine has an ammoniacal odour, while an excretion contain- ing blood or pus is often putrid, and occasionally evolves sulphuretted hydrogen. Taste.—The taste of urine is said to be at once salt and bitter. Diabetic urine has a distinctly sweet taste, owing to the presence of sugar, the existence of which was first recognised by this character. The French chemists still lay stress on the “saveur” as a test for urine. EeACTION OF Urine.—Normal urine has commonly a marked acid reaction to litmus, but during the so- called “alkaline tide” which follows meals the urine has not unfrequently a distinct alkaline reaction. Diabetic urine is very generally acid, and the reaction is not readily altered by food or alkaline medicines. The acid reaction of urine has been attributed to the presence of traces of hippuric or other acids in an uncombined state, but is in all probability due to the occurrence of sodium dihydrogen phosphate (acid phosphate of sodium), NaH2P04, produced by the re- action of the uric and sulphuric acids resulting from the metabolysis of the food on the basic sodium phosphate of the blood. Hence it follows that the acidity of urine is increased by muscular exercise and the con- sumption of highly albuminous food, as of course by the internal administration of mineral acids. Normal urine becomes alkaline after a vegetable diet containing potassium salts of organic acids. Thus the acid potassium salts of tartaric, citric, malic, and