Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![has been suggested that alkalies might be employed with profit in diabetes, to promote the oxidation of the sugar. They have also been advocated for excess of uric acid in the urine, with the expec- tation that this product of the nitrogenous tissues may become oxidized, and so converted into urea or some other substance. And they are sometimes given to fat people to increase oxidation, in order to consume their fat, and so to control unseemly obesity. The solutions of the oxides or the bicarbonates, especially the former, are used for this purpose. In diabetes their action appears to be nil, or rather, it should be said, they in no degree lessen the amount of sugar separated by the kidneys, although, if long persisted in, some derangement of the stomach must occur, with diminution in appetite, so that less food being taken, less sugar is excreted. Nor does it appear that they can oxidize uric acid in the blood ; at least, there are no experiments in proof of this. It is, however, of much service to render the urine weakly acid, or even alkaline, so as to convert the excessive quantity of uric acid into a more soluble urate. By this treatment the growth of uric acid calculi may be ]irevented. With young male children it happens not unfrequently that micturition causes severe pain, which is seen to depend on the existence of uric acid or biurates, in the form of spicular crystals, which in their passage irritate the urethra. These are dissolved and rendered innocuous by alkalinizing the m-ine. The salts best adapted to render the urine less acid, or to make it alkaline, are those which have very little action on the mucous membrane of the stomach. The citrates, in such instances, are to be preferred. Next, as to the power of alkalies to increase the oxidation of fats. That by the long-continued administration of the more alkaline preparations much wasting of the body may be induced, admits of no doubt, but this wasting is effected by their disorder- ing action on the mucous membrane of the stomach. It is highly undesirable to diminish fatness in this way, so likely to damage the health, and even to endanger life. Some writers of authority, however, maintain that obesity may be thus reduced without any ill](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2146148x_0120.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
