192 HORSE, SWINE AND POULTRY DISEASES 



to be looked for: (1) Color: White from deposited salts of lime; 

 brown or red from blood clots or coloring matter; yellow or orange 

 from bile or blood pigment; pale from excess of water; or variously 

 colored from vegetable ingredients (santonin makes it red; rhubarb 

 or senna, brown; tar or carbolic acid, green). (2) Density: The 

 horse's urine may be 1.030 to 1.050, but it may greatly exceed this 

 in diabetes and may sink to 1.007 in diuresis. (3) Chemical reac- 

 tion, as ascertained by blue litmus or red test papers. The horse on 

 vegetable diet has alkaline urine turning red test papers blue, while 

 in the sucking colt and the horse fed on flesh or on his own tissues 

 (in starvation or abstinence during disease) it is acid, turning blue 

 litmus red. (4) Organic constituents, as when glairy from albumen 

 coagulable by strong nitric acid and boiling, when charged with mi- 

 croscopic casts of the uriniferpus tubes, with the eggs or bodies of 

 worms, with sugar, blood, or bile. (5) In its salts, which may crys- 

 tallize out spontaneously, or on boiling, or on the addition of chem- 

 ical reagents. 



Albuminous urine in the horse is usually glairy, so that it may 

 be drawn out in threads, but its presence can always be tested as fol- 

 lows: If the liquid is opaque, it may be first passed through filter 

 paper; if very dense and already precipitating its salts, it may be 

 diluted with distilled water; add to the suspected liquid acetic acid 

 drop by drop until it reddens the blue litmus paper ; then boil gently 

 in a test tube ; if a precipitate is thrown down, set the tube aside to 

 cool and then add strong nitric acid. If the precipitate is not dis- 

 solved, it is albumen ; if dissolved it was probably urate of ammonia. 

 Albumen is normally present in advanced gestation ; abnormally it 

 is seen in diseases in which there occurs destruction of blood globules 

 (anthrax, low fevers, watery states of the blood, dropsies), in diseases 

 of the heart and liver which prevent the free escape of blood from 

 the veins and throw back venous pressure on the kidneys, in inflam- 

 mation of the lungs and pleura?, and even bloating, doubtless from 

 the same cause, and in all congestive or inflammatory diseases of the 

 kidneys, acute or chronic. 



Casts of the uriniferous tubes can only be seen by placing the 

 suspected urine under the microscope. They are usually very elastic 

 and mobile, waving about in the liquid when the cover-glass is 

 touched, and showing a uniform clear transparency or entangled 

 circular epithelial cells or opaque granules or flattened red-blood 

 globules or clear refrangent oil globules. They may be even densely 

 opaque from crystals of earthy salts. Pus cells may be found in the 

 urine associated with albumen, and are recognized by clearing up, 

 when treated with acetic acid, so that each cell shows two or three 

 nuclei. 



DIURESIS, OR EXCESSIVE SECRETION OF URINE. 



This consists in an excessive secretion of a clear, watery urine of 

 a low specific gravity (1.007) with a correspondingly ardent thirst, 

 a rapidly advancing emaciation, and great loss of strength and spirit. 



Causes. Its causes may be any agent medicinal, alimentary, 

 or poisonous which unduly stimulates the kidneys; the reckless ad- 



