242 THE SECRETIONS: 



marked. In these cases, especially in chronic metritis, it is 

 frequently mixed with the leucorrhceal uterine discharge. 



[In a case of endometritis 1 and pericarditis with purulent 

 exudation, occurring thirteen days after delivery, the urine was 

 passed in very small quantity, evolved a disagreeable odour, 

 was turbid, and deposited a rather copious sediment. The 

 sediment consisted for the most part of pus, mixed with a few 

 blood-corpuscles, epithelium-scales, and fat- vesicles. 



The reaction of the urine was acid; its specific gravity 1020. 

 It appeared on analysis that the urea was much diminished, 

 that there were only traces of uric acid, that there was a little 

 albumen, no bile-pigment, and scarcely any trace of chlorides. 

 The sulphates were slightly, and the earthy-phosphates much 

 increased.] 



Urine in typhus. 



We formerly had occasion to remark that less was known of 

 the actual condition of the blood in typhus than in inflam- 

 matory diseases; the same observation is equally true with regard 

 to the urine. Very little light has yet been thrown upon the 

 varying nature of the urine in this disease : sometimes we find it 

 of a brown colour, acid, and of high specific gravity, in fact, like 

 inflammatory urine ; sometimes it is clear like the urine after 

 copious drinking; on other occasions it does not appear to differ 

 from normal urine : it varies between an acid, an alkaline, and 

 a neutral reaction. It is to be presumed that these changes in 

 the relative constitution of the urine correspond with certain 

 reactions in the organism; the connexion, however, is not 

 always very clear, even to the observant physician. This much 

 is, however, certain, that in the first stage of the disease a 

 dark, specifically dense, acid urine is often excreted, and that 

 in proportion as the fever assumes a torpid character, and the 

 vital powers become depressed, the urine becomes clearer, loses 

 its acidity, becomes neutral, and in a very short time (often after 

 one to two hours) alkaline, containing carbonate of ammonia. 

 Sometimes a yellowish-brown, turbid, fetid, and alkaline urine 

 is excreted. 



1 Heller's Archiv, vol. 1, p. 23. 



