URIC ACID, 215 



acid and its salts to perceive that there is nothing wonderful in the 

 presence of an acid urate in an acid fluid, and that the occurrence 

 of acid urate of soda is perfectly natural. Ure* and Lipowitzf 

 were the first to direct attention to the circumstance which was 

 afterwards very prominently brought forward by Liebig, that 

 phosphate of soda might be one of the solvents of uric acid, and 

 that thus an acid urate of soda and an acid phosphate of soda 

 might be produced. BerzeliusJ, however, has remarked that there 

 are very few solutions of alkaline salts in which uric acid does not 

 dissolve more readily than in water, and that it, for the most part, 

 separates from these solutions as uric acid, and not as an acid 

 alkali-salt. I have, however, especially remarked (Op. cit.) that 

 uric acid may extract soda from alkaline lactates, and from com- 

 pounds of the alkalies with other organic acids, and that the acid 

 salt thus formed communicates an acid reaction to the previously 

 neutral fluid; the urate of soda then separates from a pure mixture 

 in a crystalline form, but from a solution containing extractive 

 matter, as the urine, in an amorphous state, and dissolves again 

 very readily when heated to 50. 



The appearance of this sediment of urate of soda (Prout's 

 amorphous and impalpable yellow sediment) is by no means to be 

 regarded as a pathological symptom ; it is nothing more than an 

 augmentation of a salt normally existing in the urine, induced by 

 simple physiological relations. Hence we especially observe the 

 formation of such sediments, when, for any reason, the due inter- 

 change of the gases in the lungs does not take place, or when, from 

 disturbances of the circulation, the blood does not readily permeate 

 the pulmonary vessels. Thus a sediment of this nature may be 

 noticed in men and animals when there is an insufficiency of 

 proper exercise ; carnivorous animals, which in their natural state 

 secrete so little uric acid, after long confinement frequently pass a 

 sedimentary urine, especially when they have been reared in cages, 

 and have been attacked by osteomalacia. In fully developed 

 emphysema, or even when only a part of the lung has lost some of 

 its elasticity, a sedimentary urine is one of the most common 

 symptoms. Heart-diseases, enlargements of the liver, &c., are 

 associated with disturbances of the circulation, and hence give rise 

 to a sedimentary urine. It is to such diseases as these that 

 illogical, ontological names such as hemorrhoids, gout, &c. 



* Medical Gazette, vol. 35, p. 188. 



-1- Ann. d. Ch. u. Pliann. 13d. 38, S. 350. 



1 Jaliresber. Bd. 26, S. 873. 



