aA 
: 
‘LiT. | 180 
** whenever the lithic acid predominates, the alka- 
lies are the appropriate remedies, but that when 
the calcareous or magnesian salts prevail, the 
acids are to be resorted to’—a remark which pre- 
supposes the recent urine to have been examined, 
its sediments scrutinized, and, if necessary to 
confirm our knowledge derived from such scrutiny, 
an actual analysis of these sediments, by chemical 
tests. It is here that the chemico-medical pathology 
becomes so deeply interesting ; here that judicious 
treatment becomes so materially dependant on the 
enlightened view of urinary disordered function, 
presented to the profession by the labours of Prout, 
Marcet, Brande, Wilson Philip, Wollastson, Ma- 
jendie, and others. ot 
In what condition of the system does the lithic- 
- §enerating process originate ; and what practical 
deductions can be made from knowing that condi- 
tion? It is obvious that the chain of actions, which 
binds all the relative individual processes of the 
body conspiring to make the entire digestive pro- 
cess as it iscalled, must every link be sensible to 
the contiguous and continuous morbid impulses, the 
eifect of which is to pervert in an especial a 
perceivable manner, the fluid it is destined to sé- ; 
crete, though less important aberrations from — 
healthy action are induced in other functions. - 
Whatever course of diet, dress, habits, or whatev- 
er moral causes may, by the individual effect of — 
either, or the collective operation of the whole, — 
tend to derange, impair or destroy the healthy 
functions of the stomach and intestines, the liver 
and the skin, must, in consequence of the catena- 
tion of the functional actions of all these, with 
‘the kidnies, be a cause of lithic disease. And . 
‘this will be the case in a greater or less degree, _ 
™m proportion to the presence in, or absence from 
