NEW NITROMETER FOR CLINICAE ESTIMATION OF UREA 435 
in its place, necessarily affects the reading on the burette, and is fatal to the success 
of any particular estimation. 
And last, but by no means least, is the question of cost. What with so much 
rubber, three pieces of glass, and a special stand, the price must be considerable (in 
the lowest price list 12s. iod. altogether), and even yet, despite other forms of 
prosperity, there is, medically speaking, none so rich as not to do him reverence who 
can help to reduce the price of modern scientific apparatus. One might in this instance 
have less reason to object if the graduated and stoppered burette included were avail- 
able for titration, but, being constricted at both ends, it is not. 
These two instruments may be taken as typical of many others which seem only 
more complicated, and therefore more liable to go wrong in one or other of the 
parts. 
One is quite ready, of course, to admit that no instrument ot the nitrometer 
or ureometer species which affects to give the volume of nitrogen per c.c. of urine, 
and admits of being adjusted to correct such distributing variants as barometric and 
thermometric conditions, can be simple or cheap. But the question may be asked, 
why take the trouble to estimate and record the volume of nitrogen on any given day 
or at any given place except in terms of a constant standard ? No two places, no two 
days probably, agree. However refined the scientific appliances, the results given must 
always contain a certain error, unless corrected to a constant standard. 
Therefore if we take the plea of scientific accuracy as an argument for the use 
of carefully regulated, but complicated and costly apparatus, and as against the use of 
the more amenable and thriftier process but less absolutely accurate readings of a 
simpler instrument, it will not hold good. With the most perfect instrument one 
ought to ' standardize ' all the same, whilst with a simple and ready instrument, even 
if not absolutely accurate, one can record the reading, and, knowing the error of the 
instrument, make one correction suffice. This can be done at leisure, and then the 
result will be perfectly accurate. 
All this could be done for readings from the Doremus, or Southall's instrument, 
did other considerations warrant its employment. It is also quite easy to do the 
same with this one, and to prove how very small the error of any particular reading 
is. The error is, in fact, so small that it may safely be neglected, for however im- 
portant absolute accuracy at times may be in the clinical work of a general practitioner, 
time, patience, and material also must count for something, and it is in the hope of 
economizing all three, as well as of simplifying the application of this Hypobromite 
process (said to be the most accurate), that this instrument has been designed. (See 
plate III). 
It consists of one piece of glass only, which is affixed by one or more rubber 
bands to an upright fluted stand of wood, which, being fixed into a small horizontal 
square also of wood, may be moved with the instrument in situ from place to place. 
