218 CONJUGATED ACIDS. 



experiments regarding the quantity of uric acid in the blood of 

 gouty patients, for in this country we should certainly hesitate 

 before abstracting such masses of blood as he employed in his 

 analyses ; he never operated on less than two pounds of blood. 



Urate of soda is very often found in gouty nodules or concre- 

 tions, as is shown by the analyses of Wollaston, Laugier, Wurzer, 

 Pauquy, and Bor. My own limited observations entirely accord 

 with the statements of these chemists. The concretions form,, for 

 the most part, yellowish white, soft masses, speckled here and there 

 with red spots ; on exposure to the atmosphere they harden ; 

 examined under the microscope they present the most beautiful 

 tufts of crystals of urate of soda. 



Wolf* asserts that he has discovered uric acid in the sweat of 

 arthritic patients ; I have made many attempts to detect it in 

 such cases, but have never yet been successful. 



Unfortunately the idea of gout in medicine is so vague that it 

 would be well, if, for the present, it were altogether expelled from 

 science. The pathologists are wont to refer to the chemist for the 

 elucidation of this singular disease, but they should rather consider 

 that it is their place to furnish the chemist with more exact ideas 

 regarding this mysterious affection before seeking for an explana- 

 tion. It must, moreover, be observed that, notwithstanding their 

 assertions to the contrary, pathologists have not yet taught us to 

 distinguish any appreciable difference between gout and rheuma- 

 tism ; while we find from pathological anatomy that the group of 

 symptoms which has generally been regarded as characteristic of 

 the former of these diseases may yield very different results in 

 reference to alterations in the tissues as revealed after death. We 

 most commonly meet with diseases of the osseous system, with 

 osteomalacia in young persons and adults, an affection in which 

 the bones become poorer in earths, and consequently more flexible, 

 than in their natural state, or with osteoporosis or osteospathy- 

 rosis, where there is resorption of the cartilage as well as of the 

 earths, as resulting from gout : but the essential principle of the 

 disease cannot lie in this resorption, since often in one and the 

 same bone we find sclerosis and porosis ; the change which 

 the bone undergoes is solely dependent on the nature of the 

 exudation which is thrown out ; if the latter be very consistent 

 (fibrinous ?) it puts on an appearance of callus, deposits an excess 

 of bone-earth, and the affected part becomes sclerotic ; if, on the 

 other hand, it be fluid, resorption takes place, and the result is 

 * Diss. siiit. casum Calculositatis. Tub. 1817- 



