348 CHEM ICO-PII YS IOLOGICA L CONSIDERATIONS ON 
admit them, in certain proportion at least, into the diuretic effects 
of mucilage. In fine, the slight alterableness of this principle 
by pulmonary combustion ought also to be reckoned among the 
causes excitive of its action on the kidneys. 
Alkaline Diuretics. 
All salts having for their base potass and soda, and even to a 
certain extent those of other bases of the first class, whatever be 
their kind, appear to possess purgative and diuretic properties. 
Nevertheless, practitioners do not employ them indifferently to 
answer one another’s medical effects ; so that, while one kind are 
pretty exclusively employed as purgatives, the others are used 
more particularly as diuretics. It is of consequence to know if 
this division, the result of practice, coincides with the veritable 
principles of science, and if there is nothing to add to what the 
practitioner on this point has taught us. 
Messrs. Laveran and Millon have made numberless experiments 
on the effects of alkaline salts in large and in small doses. They 
have constantly observed, when they gave salts in strong doses, 
that they purged, and that in fractional doses they determined 
diuresis : this, at least, is the result they have come to from trials 
with the tartrate of potass and soda (tartarized antimony), and the 
sulphate of soda. Moreover, they have made this interesting ob- 
servation, that salts ejected through the anus had not undergone 
any chemical change ; while the alkaline salts with organic acids, 
which passed off through the urinary passages, were constantly 
converted into carbonates , the consequence of veritable combustion 
or oxydation of their electro-negative principle*. Lastly, these au- 
thors have remarked a notable and constant augmentation in the 
proportion of urea in the alkaline diuresis, which indicates increased 
activity in the operation of decomposition and combustion of the 
body under the influence of alkaline salts. 
Out of their combined observations Messrs. Millon and Laveran 
have deduced the following conclusions: — 1. Strong individuals 
digest and transform more effectually organic salts into carbonates, 
and the diuretic effect is more evident. 2. With weak individuals 
the conversion of salts into carbonates and the diuresis are less 
determinable, while purgation is constant. 3. Nervous diseases are 
favourable to combustion of organic salts, and their change into 
carbonates. 4. The diseases of the digestive canal and fever are 
unfavourable to diuresis, and favourable to purgation. 5. Small 
doses, and the protracted exhibition of these salts, at once favour 
their absorption and decompositiont. 
* A fact observed by Gilbert Blane and Wohler. 
f Report of the Sittings of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute, 
vol. xix, p. 347. 
