223 DR. OKD. 



demonstrates clearly the physical nature of the whole 

 process. He takes step by step each new condition and 

 appearance, grapples Avith each, and never leaves it till it 

 has yielded its secret. He mixes phosphates with the car- 

 bonates, and notes, as Professor Harting has noted, their 

 modifying influence ; he studies the question of crystallising 

 force ; he concludes that the globules ought to be undone by 

 simple disturbance of the mutual attractions of their mole- 

 cules, and follows the conclusion by successful practical proof. 



He now proceeds at once to point out that simple physical 

 laws are capable of leading to the construction of many 

 structural forms found in living bodies. He demonstrates 

 this in the globular calculi observed by him in the urine of 

 the horse as early as 1849; in the shells of Crustacea and 

 Mollusca; in bone, in tooth, in the half-bony tendons of 

 birds ; and he is not stopped after exhausting those forma- 

 tions in which earthy matter takes a part, but he boldly 

 applies his principles to the structure of the sclerous tissue 

 of vegetables, of starch-globules, of pigment-cells, of glome- 

 ruli, and of the lens of the eye. 



The spirit of patient exhaustive research which enabled 

 Mr. Hainey to accomplish all these results has wrought very 

 remarkably upon those who have been fortunate enough to 

 come under his teaching at St. Thomas's Hospital. There 

 are, I am well assured, many who have learned to reconsider 

 conclusions and theories, and to avoid error, by regarding 

 facts in the conscientious manner of their teacher. 



It was fitting that original observations of such value 

 should be applied further in elucidation of particular appear- 

 ances where explanation of such appearances was wanting or 

 unsatisfactory. As one of Mr. Rainey's pupils, I hope to be 

 pardoned if after sketching what he has done I follow with 

 an account of more recent observations of my own. In 1870 

 I showed that the great variety of forms assumed by uric acid 

 in urine might be at least in part explained by the nature of 

 the associated constituents in each case. It was found by 

 experiment, for instance, that where uric acid was deposited 

 in the presence of albumen it took the form of either small 

 crystals with rounded angles, or of dumb bells, or of sub- 

 spherical bodies, or even of spheres. (See fig.) 



On the other hand, in the presence of sugar, starch, and 

 glycogen the uric acid took a more or less regular lamellar 

 form with sharp angles (see fig.) ; and in the presence of 

 gelatine the forms were intermediate between the other two 

 (see fig.)- 



Similarly in a series of observations upon albuminous 



