HISTORY OF URIC ACID. I2J 



smaller proportion in that of carnivorous, and can scarcely be 

 said to exist if, indeed, it does habitually exist in that of 

 herbivorous and omnivorous quadrupeds. According to various 

 authorities, it is to be found constantly in the juices of the human 

 spleen, liver, lungs, and brain. The merest traces of it are also 

 met with normally in blood, but its proportion therein under par- 

 ticular forms of disease, such as albuminuria, and more especially 

 gout, becomes very appreciable. In certain cases of gout, indeed, 

 all the fluids of the body are found more or less saturated with 

 uric acid, and some of them even supersaturated, so as to deposit 

 those well-known concretions of urate of sodium, commonly called 

 chalkstones. I need scarcely refer also to the frequent excess of 

 uric acid discharged by the human kidneys, under greater or less 

 derangements of bodily health, and to its deposition in the forms of 

 urinary sediment, gravel, and calculus. Now this acid, as shown 

 by its formula C 5 N 4 H 4 3 , consists of only sixteen elementary 

 atoms, and is consequently, as regards its ultimate composition, a 

 far more simple body than many of those we have previously 

 considered. Nevertheless, the problem of its intimate constitu- 

 tion for a long time baffled all attempts at solution, and cannot, 

 even at the present day, be considered as quite satisfactorily un- 

 ravelled. 



(135.) Uric acid was discovered in 1776 by the renowned 

 Swedish chemist, Scheele ; but it was first submitted to a minute 

 investigation by Liebig and Wohler, whose efforts resulted in the 

 production and identification, among other new bodies, of alloxan- 

 tine, alloxanic acid, dialuric acid, uramile, mesoxalic acid, allan- 

 toine, mycomelic acid, parabanic acid, &c., and whose admirable 

 work, published in 1838, forms the broad and sound basis of all 

 our subsequent knowledge. These chemists had been preceded 

 by Brugnatelli and Prout the discoverers of alloxan and murexide 

 respectively and were succeeded more particularly by Schlieper, 

 Pelouze, Fritzsche, Gregory, and Hlasiwetz. To the number of 

 bodies already described, Schlieper added the leucoturic, allituric, 



dilituric, hydantoic, hydurilic, and allanturic or lantanuric acids 



the last also discovered by Pelouze. In 1 8 5 3 , Gerhardt, in his cele- 



