Am.  Jour.  Pharm. \ 
December,  1894.  j 
Notes  on  Lithium. 
591 
we  find  in  the  medical  and  secular  journals  of  the  day,  the  actual 
number  of  those  containing  upward  of  four  grains  of  lithium  bicar- 
bonate (equal  to  about  two  and  five-tenths  grains  of  the  dry  carbo- 
nate) to  the  gallon,  is  but  fifteen,"  and  this  amount  has  been 
reduced  by  more  recent  analyses  in  which  more  accurate  methods 
for  the  estimation  of  lithium  were  followed. 
The  physiologic  investigations  of  the  last  decade  into  the  nature 
of  uric  acid,  and  the  importance  of  the  role  played  by  it  in  the 
human  economy,  have  maintained  and  even  intensified  the  interest 
in  the  therapeutic  value  of  the  behavior  of  the  salts  of  lithium 
towards  this  acid,  first  introduced  by  Garrod  and  sustained  by  his 
successors.  The  opposition  to  the  views  of  Garrod,  which  sprung 
up  years  ago,  culminated  two  years  since  in  an  elaborate  work 
by  Dr.  Alexander  Haig  ("  On  Uric  Acid,"  1892),  who  undertook 
to  prove  experimentally  on  his  own  person  that  lithium,  adminis- 
tered for  the  elimination  of  uric  acid  from  the  system,  not  only 
failed  to  accomplish  the  purpose,  but  "diminished  the  excretion 
of  uric  acid."  In  defense  of  this  position  he  quotes  from  Rose  to 
the  effect  that  lithium  forms  "  insoluble  compounds  with  phosphate 
of  soda  and  triple  phosphate  of  ammonia  and  soda,  salts  generally 
present  in  animal  fluids."  The  work  of  Rose  has  not  been  accessi- 
ble to  me,  and  I,  therefore,  am  not  in  a  position  to  assert  whether 
or  not  Haig  properly  quoted  or  understood  him,  but  I  find  that  Dr. 
Halberstadt  asserts  that  "  sodium  phosphate  causes,  in  not  too 
attenuated  solutions  of  lithium  salts,  a  crystalline  precipitate  of 
normal  lithium  phosphate ;"  and  Sir  Dyce  Duckworth  states  that 
"  the  normal  and  biurate  of  lithium  easily  dissolve  in  alkaline  fluids, 
also  in  phosphate  of  sodium." 
This  is  in  accordance  with  my  own  experience,  but  I  found  also 
by  actual  experiment  that  no  precipitation  took  place,  even  after 
several  days,  when  such  solutions  are  further  diluted  to  one  part 
in  250  or  more  parts  of  water  before  being  mixed.  When  we  take 
into  consideration  the  minute  amounts  of  sodium  phosphate  and 
lithium  salts  that  can  possibly  meet  in  the  blood-serum  at  any 
given  moment,  and  that  each  meeting  must  occur  in  rapid  motion, 
we  must  conclude  that  other  causes  have  been  instrumental  in 
producing  the  results  of  Dr.  Haig's  experiments. 
Another  protest  against  the  conclusions  of  Haig  was  recently 
published  by  a  well-known  French  pharmacist,  M.  P.  Ardoue,  in 
