The Action of Medicines in the System: Or, on the mode in which therapeutic agents introduced into the stomach produce their peculiar effects on the animal economyHeadland, Frederick William
Science
The Action of Medicines in the System: Or, on the mode in which therapeutic agents introduced into the stomach produce their peculiar effects on the animal economy
Headland, Frederick William
Therapeutics
There are some other remedies which may be advantageously employed as
solvents for Uric acid and Urates, whose use is not attended with this
danger, and whose efficacy is a proof that the occurrence of a deposit
in the urine is not a mere question of the preponderance of acid or of
alkali in that secretion. The most important of these is the common
Phosphate of Soda, first recommended by Liebig, who discovered that Uric
acid was soluble in a solution of that salt.
If forty grains of dry Phosphate of Soda, seven grains of Uric acid, and
fifteen of Hippuric acid, be dissolved in a pint of hot water, and to
this solution two per cent. of Urea be added, a kind of artificial urine
will be formed.
Biborate of Soda, or Borax, has also the power of dissolving Uric acid,
and has been recommended in the treatment of lithic deposits by
Bouchardat and Binswanger.
Mr. A. Ure has strongly recommended Benzoic acid in these cases. It
passes out in the urine as Hippuric acid. (_Vide Prop. VI._) The amount
of the deposit appears to decrease under the use of this remedy, but
whether the formation of the Uric acid in the blood is prevented, as
supposed by Mr. Ure, or whether it is not simply held in solution by
means of the Hippuric acid, is not clear. Dr. Golding Bird recommends
also Cinnamic acid, which is contained in Cinnamon water, and in the
balsams of Peru and Tolu. It resembles Benzoic, and undergoes the same
change into Hippuric acid. The salts of these acids possess a similar
power.
Diuretics in general are useful in all cases of urinary deposit, for
they increase the quantity of the fluid part of the urine. It is
observed by Dr. Prout that healthy urine is the best solvent that we are
able to supply.
When solvent remedies are employed for the purposes above mentioned,
they not unfrequently fail altogether; and, as has been already
observed, they require, even when successful, to be perpetually
administered, or else the deposit will recur. For the solvent passes out
along with each successive quantity of the Lithic or Phosphatic matter
that is formed and excreted.
A radical cure of such deposits can only be effected by a medicine that
shall counteract the morbid process by which they are continually
produced. This cannot be done by a Restorative, but requires a Catalytic
medicine. Such remedies we must presently consider. (_Vide
Antiarthritics._)
Thus are concluded the six orders of restorative medicines; all of which
are seen to agree together in some common characters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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