UREA IN THE URINARY SECRETIONS. 
677 
empirics prove dangerous, but likewise at times by their 
immorality. 
Here comes another fact. We extract from a letter of these 
two veterinarians, who together attest it : — 
(£ In the month of August last, the Court of Assize of Loir- 
et-Cher had to adjudicate on a case of poisoning by arsenic, 
in which an empiric, named Leconte, living at Coutun, near 
Chatre, had become involved in having prepared and furnished 
a poison. 
“ This man (appreciated at his just worth by him interested 
in the execution of the crime) had been consulted on the 
choice of the poison to be used, and a reward had been pro- 
mised him. Arsenic was selected, and given by Leconte. 
£e Recognised as culpable of having assisted in the perpetra- 
tion of the crime, Leconte had been condemned to twenty 
years of hard labour.’* — Bee . de Med, Vet . de Sept. 1854. 
Home Department. 
ON A NEW AND SIMPLE METHOD OE DETERMINING THE 
AMOUNT OE UREA IN THE URINARY SECRETIONS. 
By Edmund Wm. Davy, A.B., M.B., T.C.D. 
Lecturer on Chemistry in the Carmichael School of Medicine, 
Dublin. 
Urea has long been regarded with much interest by scien- 
tific men, on account of its physiological and chemical rela- 
tions. 
It represents one of the last stages of a series of metamor- 
phoses or changes, which nitrogenous matter undergoes in 
the animal economy, and is the form under which the detritus 
of pre-existing nitrogenous tissues, which have become effete, 
principally passes from the system. 
This interesting organic base, urea, is not only formed 
during the exercise of the vital functions in man, and some of 
the higher animals, but is also produced during the chemical 
decomposition of a number of substances containing nitrogen ; 
and the chemist can now obtain it in any quantity by arti- 
ficial means, and thus imitate one of the most important 
results of the ^chemistry of life. 
In reference to medicine, urea is not without some practical 
interest, as it is well known that during various diseased con- 
xxvii. 88 
