ANALYSIS OF THE URINE. 



337 



as now, with the object of making the diagnosis of diseases. Physi- 

 cians in India knew sugar diabetes and several other conditions 

 giving rise to anomalies of the human urine. Hippocrates (400 

 years B, c), mentions the icteric coloration of urine. Celsius (con- 

 temporary with Christ) mentions numerous urinary sediments, and 

 ascribes to them prognostic symptoms. Theophilus (600 a.d.) 

 wrote a treatise upon the analysis of the urine, and John Actuarius 

 (thirteenth century) has left a work of seven volumes upon the 

 same subject. At the end of the last century more than two 

 hundred large works were in existence upon the subject of the 

 examination of urine. 



Given up to quackery during the obscure period of the middle 

 ages, urinalysis took a new start in the eighteenth century, under 

 the influence of the school of Paracelsus, as a consequence of the 

 great progress in chemistry. Dekkers discovered albumin in 1726; 

 Cutugno demonstrated the presence of this substance in the urine 

 by boiling, in the year 1776 ; the other matters found in it under 

 various conditions were successfully discovered at later periods. 

 After the use of the microscope became established in our medical 

 studies, toward the middle of the present century, the diagnosis of 

 diseases of the kidney attained great precision. 



In veterinary medicine, Haubner was the first who undertook 

 the examination of urines. In the domestic animals this study 

 is much more complicated than in the human race, on account of 

 the differences existing in the urines of the different animal species, 

 and notably between the urines of herbivorous and those of car- 

 nivorous species. 



{A.) Chemical Analysis of the Urine. 



This comprises the search by chemical processes for the matters 

 contained in the urine ; such are : albumin in its various forms, 

 hemoglobin, the coloring matters of the bile, sugar, leucin, cystin, 

 tyrosin, etc. But the normal matters which are contained in the 

 urine may be present in abnormal quantity (augmentation or dimi- 

 nution) ; such as : water, urea, uric acid, hippuric acid, biliary 

 acids, phenol, indican, creatin, xanthin, catechin, the sulphonic 

 acids, the coloring matters of the urine, mucus, and finally salts — 

 chlorides of sodium, potassium, and ammonium, the phosphates of 

 lime, magnesia, soda, potash, and iron ; also, the sulphates, carbon- 

 :ates (of lime), oxalates, etc. 



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