An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology : intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners / by Thomas Young.

  • Thomas Young
Date:
1813
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology : intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners / by Thomas Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    shank, who was employed by Rollo on the occasion of his in- vestigation of diabetes, particularly described urea, showed its property of being precipitated by nitric acid, and described me- thods of ascertaining with precision the relative proportions of the different component parts of the secretion. He found that in fever, it affords a precipitate with corrosive sublimate ; in a higher fever, with alum ; and in a still higher, with nitric acid. In a general dropsy, he found that it contained a considerable quantity of albumen, and a smaller quantity in dyspepsia: but in an encysted dropsy the quantity of albumen was not increased. Three years afterwards, Fourcroy and Vauquelin published a still more elaborate and very excellent analysis : and Proust has since found, in this fluid, carbonic acid, carbonate of lime, and a peculiar resin, like that of the bile ; all which how- ever seem to be products of the operations by which they are obtained. Thenard has lately attempted to show that the un- combined acid is not the phosphoric, but the acetic; I have myself found that it was a mixture of the lactic and the uric acids. In the bone earth, which is held in solution by this ex- cess of acid, I found, as in the bones, some fluate of lime: and it appeared by comparison with the substances contained in the blood, that the kidneys must oxygenize a part of the bloods re- moter constituent parts, and produce several acids, alkalis, and earths, which either did not previously exist in the blood, or were contained in it much less abundantly. I found, for ex- ample, the sulfuric and phosphoric acids in considerable quan- tity, while the blood does not contain a perceptible trace of the former, and a very small portion of the latter : the earthy and al- kaline salts are also far more abundant than in the blood. [This secretion contains some amraoniacal salts, while'' the muriates of potass and soda are almost the only, salts that are found in any other of the animal fluids. Afh. III. 12.] The dissimilar precipitates, which are deposited in cool- ing, I found to be either the mucus of the bladder alone, which is always present, either in suspension or in solufiou, or a com-