780 



URINE. 



ROSENBACH'S urine test, which consists in adding nitric acid drop by drop 

 to the boiling-hot urine and obtaining a claret-red coloration and a bluish-red 

 foam on shaking, depends upon the formation of indigo substances, especially 



indigo-red. 1 



Fat in the Urine. The elimination of a urine which m appearance and rich- 

 ness in fat resembles chyle is called chyluria. It habitually contains a proteid and 

 often fibrin. Chyluria occurs mostly in the inhabitants of the tropics. Lipuria, 

 or the elimination of fat with the urine, may appear in apparently healthy persons, 

 sometimes with and sometimes without albuminuria, in pregnancy, and also in 

 certain diseases, as in diabetes, poisoning with phosphorus, and fatty degeneration 

 of the kidneys. 



Fat is usually detected by the microscope. It may also be dissolved with 

 ether, and may invariably be detected by evaporating the urine to dryness and 

 extracting the residue with ether. 



Cholesterin is also sometimes found in. the urine in chyluria and in a few other 

 cases. 



Amino-acids. Leucine and tyrosine have been repeatedly found in urine by 

 the older methods, especially in acute yellow atrophy of the liver, in acute phos- 

 phorus poisoning, and in severe cases of typhoid and smallpox. Since ^-naphtha- 

 lene sulphochloride has been used in the detection of amino-acids these bodies, have 

 not only been repeatedly found in normal urine (glycocoll, see page 717), but also 

 in pathological urines. 2 



Cystine (see page 146). BAUMANN and GOLDMANN S claim that a 

 substance similar to cystine occurs in very small amounts in normal 

 urine. This substance occurs in large quantities in the urine of dogs 

 after poisoning with phosphorus. Cystine itself is only found with pos- 

 itiveness, and even then very rarely, in urinary calculi and in pathologi- 

 cal urines, from which it may separate as a sediment. Cystinuria occurs 

 oftener in men than in women. BAUMANN and v. UDRANSZKY found 

 in urine in cystinuria the two diamines, cadaverine (pentamethylen- 

 diamine) and putrescine (tetramethylendiamine) , which are produced 

 in the putrefaction of proteins. These two diamines were also found 

 in the contents of the intestine in cystinuria, while under normal condi- 

 tions they are not present. HAMMARSTEN therefore considers that per- 

 haps some connection exists between the formation of diamines in the 

 intestine, by the peculiar putrefaction in cystinuria, and cystinuria 

 itself. This is less probable, and cystinuria is, as generally admitted, 

 rather an anomaly in the protein metabolism where the cystine for 

 unknown reasons is not destroyed as ordinarily. It is remarkable 

 that the cystine of the food-proteins is eliminated by the urine while in 



1 See Rosin, Virchow's Arch., 123. 



2 Ignatowski, Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 42; Abderhalden and Schittenhelm, ibid., 

 45; Abderhalden and Barker, ibid., 42. See also footnote 5, page 717. 



3 Baumann, Zeitschr. f . physiol. Chem., 8. In regard to the literature on cystinuria 

 see Brenzinger, ibid., 16; Baumann and Goldmann, ibid., 12; Baumann and v. Udran- 

 szky, ibid., 13; Stadthagen and Brieger, Berlin, klin. Wochenschr., 1889; Cammidge 

 and Garrod, Journ. of Path, and Bacteriol., 1900 (literature on diamines in the urine 

 and feces); Loewy and Neuberg, Bioch. Zeitschr., 2; Wolf and Schaffer, Journ. of 

 biol. Chem., 4. 



