On Gravel, calculus & gout : chiefly an application of Professor Liebig's physiology to the prevention and cure of these diseases / by H. Bence Jones.

Date:
1842
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On Gravel, calculus & gout : chiefly an application of Professor Liebig's physiology to the prevention and cure of these diseases / by H. Bence Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    bbriate of ammonia depends on a loss of vitality. This is a similar explanation to one quoted by Dr. Richter, in his Eaux Thermales de Teplitz, p. 94 : Les chemistes ne peuvent qu'analyser le cadavre des eaux. The attempts to explain one truth by the assumption of a more general one, which is nei- ther self-evident nor can be shewn to be probable, is not the smallest advance in the path of know- ledge. It profits nothing to explain things which appear incomprehensible, on account of not having been investigated by assumptions far more incom- prehensible. For example : M. Demalet, quoted by Dr. Young, on consumption, says, The voice is not a simple vibration ; it is animalised; it is alive, like the organs which produce it. The urine is also found to be alkaline, even when it passes from the kidneys in states of great weak- ness, and when the spinal cord has been injured. In weakness, the sulphuric and phosphoric acids, produced by changes in the albuminous tissues, are formed in exceedingly small quantities. These acids no longer are sufficient to convert all the car- bonate of lime into sulphate and phosphate, and consequently the carbonate of lime appears in the urine, or is deposited, if a nucleus exists. Hence it is, probably, that we so frequently find small quan- tities of carbonate of lime in phosphatic calculi. In very great states of weakness, the changes in the tis- sues are so slow that the smallest quantities of phos- phates are produced, and then, though the urine