Uric acid as a factor in the causation of disease : a contribution to the pathology of high arterial tension, headache, epilepsy, mental depression, gout, rheumatism, diabetes, Bright's disease, and other disorders / by Alexander Haig.

  • Haig, Alexander, 1853-1924.
Date:
1892
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Uric acid as a factor in the causation of disease : a contribution to the pathology of high arterial tension, headache, epilepsy, mental depression, gout, rheumatism, diabetes, Bright's disease, and other disorders / by Alexander Haig. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    relation of acid to urea of 1—6.6. In the earlier part of my researches I did not estimate the acidity, and I have therefore omitted the figures of this period from the above totals ; the relations of uric acid to urea in this period varied from 1—35 to 1—38, and would have tended to bring the relation nearer to 1—33, the one made use of in my curves. At the beginning of my work my diet was more nitrogenous, the acidity was higher, and I excreted less uric acid; on a more vegetarian diet I excreted relatively more uric acid, but as we shall see presently, this does not prove that I formed more. Among other investigators Messrs. Yvon and Berhoz (Rev. de Med. September, 1888) found as the result of one series of experiments the relation 1—30, and of another series 1 —40; While Lecanu (quoted by Sir Dyce Duckworth, A Treatise on Gout, p. 120) found the same relation that I have, viz., 1—33. There is thus a considerable collection of figures tending to show that the normal relation of uric acid to urea in excretion is 1_33 or thereabouts, and I have ventured to suggest that where this has been found over a very long period of time, it may represent something near the real relative formation of these two substances. As already mentioned (chapter i.) I have adopted the theory of Sir A. Garrod, that the final stage in the formation of uric acid is the production of urate of ammonium in the kidney. According to this theory a large part of the urate so formed passes at once down the ureter and is excreted; but a small residue lingers in the kidney or the blood circulating in it, and is eventually carried over by the renal vein into the general circulation; when there it is, according to the same authority, attracted differently by different organs, and tends to be rendered less soluble, and so to be held back and accumulate in certain organs, as the liver, spleen, and certain fibrous tissues, especially those of joints, probably because these tissues are less alkaline than the rest of the tissues and fluids of the body.