A NEW NITROMETER FOR THE CLINICAL 
ESTIMATION OF UREA BY THE 
HYPOBROMITE PROCESS 
By W. G. LITTLE, M.A., Aberd., M.B., CM., Edin. 
The following instrument has been designed with a view to facilitate the 
estimation of urea for clinical purposes. Like all such instruments, it cannot claim 
to be absolutely accurate in the results given, but in clinical work, as carried on by 
practitioners in general practice, absolute accuracy is often of less importance than 
ready usefulness and economy of time and material. Perhaps it may be claimed that 
in both these latter respects this instrument is an improvement, always presupposing 
reasonable care on the part of the operator. 
The ureometer hitherto in greatest vogue amongst the limited number of prac- 
titioners who consider it part of the day's work to trouble about urea estimation has 
been that of Doremus or, as it is termed in this country, Southall's ureometer. 
The chief merit seems to be that it represents a combination of good qualities. 
It is small, portable, and handy, but when we come to try it for practical purposes 
these very characteristics will be found to constitute its most patent drawbacks. 
Being so small, it is apt to get lost or knocked about. It is really too easily handled. 
The temptation to use it without a stand, the necessity to manipulate it so freely in 
filling and cleansing are real disadvantages, as being apt to interfere with the accuracy 
of an experiment, and the accompanying glass pipette is not a reliable implement 
unless very carefully handled. Superadded to these dangers are the facts (by no 
means unimportant to the average modern practitioner) that half an ounce of hypo- 
bromite solution is required for each estimation, and, what is perhaps worse, much 
time is wasted after the successful experiment by having to set aside the whole 
apparatus until the froth clears and any reading becomes possible. And even then 
the same solution, having still a certain amount of nitrogen in suspension, becomes 
thereby unfitted for a second estimation should the first have failed through some 
slip of manipulation, which is by no means impossible or rather not improbable, as 
anyone can testify who has tried this instrument. In fact, as a matter of experience^ 
one may say that special adroitness with the pipette is needed in order safely to insert 
the point and leave behind all the i c.c. of urine without allowing any air to follow, 
and at the same time to prevent the escape of any nitrogen bubbles into the open 
