VARIATIONS IN THE ACIDITY OF THE URINE. 283 
even neutral. This must be attributed to the remote effect 
of the flesh meat diet used on the alternate days. In 
the second set (Table XI.), however, vegetable food was 
found to possess a great and apparently increasing power 
of depressing the acidity of the urine when persevered in 
for successive days. So that the daily average discharge 
of alkali for the four successive days of vegetable food was 
raised even above that for successive days of animal food — 
the mean total amount of free alkali per day in the former 
case being 1:71 grains and in the latter 1-68 grains. In 
the first set of observations on animal food, however, 
the mean daily discharge of free alkali was 2°17 grains. 
But the effect of mixed food was found on an average 
considerably greater than that of purely vegetable or 
purely animal food, both in duration and intensity— the 
mean daily separation of free alkali being 4°14 grains and 
4-72 grains respectively for the first and second sets. This 
contradictory result appears at present quite inexplicable, 
for there did not seem to be any difference in the rate of 
absorption nor in the quantity of the meals. 
The degree of acidity before meals (in other words, the 
remote effect) was found greatest after animal food, while 
the difference between purely vegetable food and mixed 
food was not very considerable ; the numbers on the whole, 
however, being favourable to vegetable food. In the sub- 
joined table may be seen the degree of the acid reaction 
during the hours of fasting, before breakfast and dinner, 
with the three kinds of food. 
TABLE XX, exhibits the Acidity of the Urine before meals, 
with the different kinds of food. 
om 1 to8a 12 noon to 2 pym 
duane breakfast) (Before dinner) 
Mixed food | 1-47 per 1000 | 0: 3 per hour 4 85 per 1000 | 0°74 per hour 
Vegetable food|/1-52 —s,, 0°4: a "OL, Oe 1:20 Fe 
Animalfood |2-01 ,, 0’ 70 | - AB iis 1°27 iy 
VOL. XV. PP 
