240 DR. ROBERTS ON THE DIURNAL 
returns from the stomach the acidity of the urine increases, 
and generally reaches its highest limit before food is again 
taken.”’* 
These views have not obtained universal assent. It has 
been objected to them that they are based on observations 
on a single individual,t and cannot therefore be safely ap- 
plied generally. And not only have no confirmatory facts 
been advanced, but subsequent observations have tended 
to re-establish the old opinion, that a neutral or alkaline 
state of the urine is an abnormal one. Dr. Beneket ex- 
amined his own urine on twenty-three days, and failed to 
detect any depression of the acidity as a result of taking 
food. In addition, he made not less than a hundred day- 
observations on different sick and healthy persons with 
this result — that, although the urine did occasionally 
show a depressed acidity and even an alkaline state after 
a meal, and especially after breakfast, yet this was very far 
from being constantly the case. 
Dr. Julius Vogel§ rejects Dr. Jones’s experiments on 
* Phil. Trans., vol. lvi. p. 244. 
+ Although the experiments detailed in Dr. Jones’s Paper were per- 
formed on a single individual, additional evidence of the effect of food on 
the reaction of the urine was advanced by him in the Philosophical Tran- 
sactions for 1845, p. 345. He there says: ‘‘ Dr. Andrews of Belfast stated 
to me, that having observed a case otherwise in perfect health, in which 
the urine was almost invariably alkaline about two hours after breakfast, so 
much so as frequently to be loaded with a deposition of phosphates whilst 
still in the bladder, he was led to observe the urine of about fifteen students 
in good health immediately after it was voided about noon. He found it 
to be alkaline in about two-thirds of the cases.” “At the present time I 
know five physicians in whom the above phenomena at this period of the 
day are more or less frequently visible in a greater or lesser degree, and in 
London this alkalescence will be found in those who are considered gene- 
rally healthy much oftener than is imagined.” 
t Archiv des Vereins fiir gem. Arb. zur Ford. der Wissensch. Heilkunde, 
vol. i. p. 438. 
§ Neubauer und Vogel, Anleitung zur Analyse des Harns. 2nd edition, 
p- 175. 
