Search -
A Practical Treatise on Urinary and Renal Diseases (1865)
A Practical Treatise on Urinary and Renal Diseases - 1865 Author:William Roberts Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV.—CHANGES IN THE UR1NE ON KEEPING. The changes which take place in urine after emission are a frequent source of misapprehension. Taking the reaction of the... more » urine as a guide, these changes may be said to take place in two opposite directions, namely, towards excessive acidity on the one hand, and toward alkalescence on the other. 1. It has been found that healthy urine, when exposed to the air, undergoes a regular series of spontaneous changes, to which Scherer gave the name of acid urinary fermentation. The main feature of this process is a progressive increase of the acid reaction. As a consequence of this, there usually occurs, first, a precipitation of the amorphous urates, then of uric acid, and often of oxalate of lime. Frequently, likewise, confervoid vegetations, either the mould or sugar fungus, make their appearance. The acidity goes on steadily increasing for some four or five days, sometimes for a week or ten days, and then begins to decline, as the urine passes into a state of putrefaction. It now becomes opaque from the development of myriads of minute linear particles (vibrios) ; the odour and reaction of ammonia, together with an offensive effluvia of putrescence, become perceptible. The amorphous urate deposit will now be found changed into dark round masses of urate of ammonia ; uric acid crystals give place to bright prisms of triple phosphate, and an abundant sediment of amorphous phosphate of lime sinks to the bottom of the vessel. The confervoid vegetations cease to grow with the change of reaction ; and finally perish as the secretion becomes fairly putrid. But matters do not always pass thus. Urines of low specific gravity, or of low acidity, either do not pass through this cycle of changes at all, or do so in a very imperfect manner. Their acidi...« less