12 Observations on the Effects of 



About this time (on the 26th of January) he caught 

 cold, and his urine was again veryaurbid, but this was 

 found to be wholly the effect of mucus, and the symptom 

 soon left him. 



On the 30ih of January he took twenty grains of mag- 

 nesia, and repeated it every night and motning, until the 

 1st of March, when his urine was perfectly healthy, and 

 he left it off. 



On the 1st of June he again voided a little uric acid, in 

 the form of red crystalline sand : this attack was attended 

 with a slight pain along the right ureter. He returned to 

 the use of the magnesia, which he took twiee a day for 

 three weeks, in the same dose as before, and from that time 

 to the middle of November there had been no symptoms 

 of a return of tire complaint. 



Case IV. 



A gentleman, aged fifty- six, after recovering from a se- 

 vere tit of the gout, voided constantly a large quantity of 

 mucus in his urine, a symptom which he had never before 

 noticed. There was also, occasionally, abundance of red 

 •?and, consisting principally of uric acid, but he had never 

 voided a calculus. 



His stomach was uncommonly weak, he was often af- 

 fected with heartburn, and an almost constant pain in the 

 neighbourhood of the right kidney. He had been in the 

 habit of taking tincture of bark, and other spirituous me- 

 dicines, from a belief that the pain in his right side arose 

 from gout in the stomach. , 



H« had aheady attempted to use the alkalies, which had 

 produced such unpleasant sensations in the stomach, that he 

 could not be prevailed upon to try them again in any form. 



Under these circumstances, he readily acceded to a new 

 plan of treatment. He was directed to omit the use of 

 spirituous medicines, and take twenty grams of magnesia 

 xhree times a day in water ; but this operating too power- 

 fully upon the bowels, the same quantity of magnesia was 

 taken twice a day only, with an addition of five drops of 

 laudanum to each dose. 



This plan was pursued without intermission for three 

 weeks, and he received considerable benefit, as far as con- 

 cerned the state of the stomach, and pain in the region of 

 the kidney. The urine, which was examined once a week, 

 was also, on the whole, improved ; but it occasionally de- 

 posited a very copious sediment, consisting of uric acid, 

 with a variable proportion of mucous secretion. 



After 



