468 CHEMISTBY OF THE LEUCOMAINS. 



phosphotungstic acid are added. Albumin and pepton must first be 

 removed if present. The precipitate is allowed to subside in a 

 graduated tube, and the number of cubic centimeters occupied by the 

 precipitate divided by 8 is to represent the approximate weight of 

 leucomains per liter of urine. The amount thus found in the two 

 cases was 0.6 and 1.69. Cavallero and Olivetti have, with justice, 

 severely attacked this method, and have shown its utter unreli- 

 ableness. 



It is now a well established fact that the urine of certain infections 

 diseases, as cholera (Bouchard) and septicaemia (Feltz), etc., is far 

 more poisonous than normal urine. That the poisons, basic or other- 

 wise, which are generated within the body by the activity of bacteria 

 can be excreted in the urine is seen in the fact that immunity to the 

 action of bacillus pyocyaneus has been conferred on animals by pre- 

 vious injection of urine taken from animals inoculated with that 

 bacillus (Bouchard) or with filtered cultures of the same (Charrin 

 and Ruffer). 



Furthermore the excretion of the tetanus and diphtheria poisons 

 by the urine has been shown to take place. Thus, Brunner demon- 

 strated the tetanus poison in the urine of experimental animals, but 

 failed with the urine of the disease in man. Bruschettini, however, 

 with the urine of a tetanus patient, produced tetanic symptoms in 

 mice by the injection of 3—10 c.c. subcutaneously. In the urine 

 from diphtheria patients Ronx and Yersin demonstrated the presence 

 of the diphtheritic poison by inducing paralysis in animals. Al- 

 though basic substances are not present in the urine of cholera, they 

 are present, but less frequently tiian was expected, in the discharges 

 (putrescin in only one of four cases. Boos). From cholera-feces 

 Pouchet extracted an oily fluid very poisonous to frogs ; whereas, 

 Villi6rs obtained a base which produced convulsions in guinea-pigs. 

 Kulneff pointed out the presence of ethylenediamin (?) in the 

 stomach-fluids of gastrectasia, while from the feces of a case of gas- 

 troptosis he isolated trimethylamin. 



In the consideration of the toxins in the urine of infectious dis- 

 eases it must not be forgotten, as pointed out by Jawein, that the 

 poison as well as the specific germ may be present in the urine. 

 Thus, in rabbits that died as a result of infection either with anthrax 

 bacilli, erysipelas streptococci, typhoid bacilli, or with pneumonia 

 diplococci, the urine was found to contain these organisms. It, 

 therefore, becomes difficult to decide as to whether the toxin is elab- 

 orated within the body or formed subsequently to the secretion of 

 the urine. 



The question of the toxicity of normal urine has been the subject 

 of considerable controversy. The early explanations of the cause of 

 uraemia assumed that urine was poisonous, and that uraemic symptoms 

 were the result of the retention of urine. Actual demonstrations of 



