148 
Formic  Acid  in  the  Body. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
(  February,  1921. 
in  the  crude  oil  rather  than  to  some  substance  inherent  to  the  oil, 
this  coloring  matter  may  be  characteristic  of  only  certain  varieties 
of  soy-bean.  Until  the  exact  nature  of  the  yellow  emulsion  is 
cleared  up,  the  Settini  test  should  be  used  with  caution,  and  its 
limitations  taken  into  account. 
FORMIC  ACID  IN  THE  BODY  * 
One  of  the  scientific  consequences  of  the  menaces  to  human 
health  which  have  arisen  from  the  alarmingly,  frequent  cases  of 
consumption  of  methyl  alcohol,  or  wood  spirits,  has  been  the  more 
careful  study  of  the  behavior  of  this  toxic  substance  in  the  or- 
ganism. Methyl  alcohol,  CH3OH,  is  not  completely  burned  up  to 
simple  end-products  in  the  organism;  one  of  the  products  of  its 
metabolism  is  formic  acid  HCOOH,  as  Pohl 1  demonstrated  many 
years  ago.  The  excretion  of  formic  acid  thus  becomes  an  indicator 
of  the  fact  that  methyl  alcohol  has  been  taken  into  the  body.2 
It  would  be  a  comparatively  simple  plan  to  examine  the  urine 
for  the  presence  of  formic  acid  whenever  information  is  sought 
as  to  possible  instances  of  poisoning  with  wood  alcohol.  It  hap- 
pens, however,  that  formic  acid  has  been  known  for  many  years 
to  occur  in  the  urine  of  persons  living  under  supposedly  normal 
conditions.  Autenrieth  3  found  that  the  daily  output  may  approxi- 
mate 0.25  gm.,  so  that,  without  a  quantitative  measurement  of  the 
formic  acid  in  the  urine,  definite  conclusions  as  to  its  source  and 
origin  could  not  be  drawn.  The  mere  test  for  the  presence  of 
formic  acid  will  not  suffice  to  point  to  methyl  alcohol  as  its  prede- 
cessor. 
Substantiation  of  this  general  conclusion  has  now  been  af- 
forded by  Stepp  4  at  the  Medical  Clinic  in  Giessen.  He  has  de- 
tected formic  acid  as  a  frequently  recurring  if  not  ever-present 
*From  the  Jour.  Amer.  Med.  Assoc.,  Dec.  4,  1920. 
1  Pohl,  J.:  Arch.  f.  Exper.  Path.  u.  Pharmacol,  31 :  286,  1895. 
2  Mcthyl-W 00 d- Alcohol  and  Its  End-products  in  the  Body,  editorial, 
J.  A.  M.  A.]  74:  33  (Jan.  3,  1920). 
z Autenrieth,  W.:  Ueber  den  Ameisensauregchalt  des  Hams,  normaler- 
zveise  und  nach  Eingabe  verschiedener  Substansen,  Munchcn,  med.  Wochen- 
schrift,  Aug.  1,  1920,  p.  862. 
4  Stepp,  W .:  Ueber  den  Befund  von  Ameisensdure  im  menschlichen 
Blute,  Ztschr.  f.  physiol.  Chem.,  109:99  (Mar.  1,  1920). 
