386 ON URIC ACID FORMATION 



EXPERIMENTAL. 



The animals used were the dog and the cat. In removing 

 the spleen the suggestions of Laudenbach* were usually 

 followed, and the animals all made a very rapid recovery 

 from the operation. Since the character of the diet is now 

 recognized to be of fundamental importance in uric acid pro- 

 duction, our feeding experiments were primarily directed 

 towards ascertaining the influence of those foods which are 

 known to be uric acid precursors, namely, the nucleins. No 

 diminution in uric acid production was observed in any case 

 after splenectomy. The uric acid output was observed during 

 hunger and on a diet of casein, and subsequently the influence 

 of uric acid forming food was noted. For this purpose we 

 fed sheep's pancreas, which experience in this laboratory has 

 demonstrated to occasion marked uric acid excretion. The 

 characteristic excretion of allantoin first noted after pancreas 

 feeding by Salkowski f in the dog, and by one of us in the 

 case of the cat,J was likewise always observed. Thus, from 

 the urine of a spleenless dog to which 1J kilos of fresh sheep's 

 pancreas were fed in three days, no less than 0.85 gram of 

 allantoin crystallized out on concentration. A small spleen- 

 less cat fed with one kilo of fresh sheep's pancreas in five 

 days, yielded 0.65 gram of allantoin in a similar manner. 

 We have had occasion to feed lymphatic glands, such as are 

 frequently found abundant throughout the pancreatic tissue 

 of sheep and in the submaxillary region of the ox. In each 

 case a large rise in the uric acid output was noted in both 

 normal and spleenless animals; the yield of allantoin was 

 noticeably large. So far as we are aware, these observations 

 are new and give further indication of the importance of 

 glandular tissue of this type in uric acid production. 



Protocols of the feeding experiments with splenectomized 



* Laudenbach, Archives de Physiologic, 1896, p. 698. 

 t Salkowski, Centralblatt fur die medicinische Wissenschaften, 1898, 

 p. 929. 



\ Mendel and Brown, Amer. Jour. Physiol., 1900, iii, p. 261. 



