A Guide to the Urinary Cabinet, &c
Authors: R. Venables
Journal: BMJ (1843)

This pamphlet is intended as a companion to a "Urinary Cabinet" constructed by MIessrs.George Knight and Co.The cabinet contains an apparatus, and all the tests necessary for an elaborate series of experiments on the urine, and represents, on a large scale, the portable case of Mr. Ronketti.The direc- tions furnished by the author of the pamphlet, as a guide to the experimentalist on urinary secretions, are clear and practical, and we think that the follow- ing condensed account will serve as an useful article for reference:-Before we attempt any investigation of the proper- ties of urine in a disordered state, we should make ourselves acquainted with the general appearance and properties of healthy urine, and the reagencies pro- duced by the different tests.Urine which has a yellow or deep orange-red color indicates a mal-distribution of the bile, and denotes a tendency to, if not actual jaundice.Copper-colored urine, which is or becomes remarkably transparent on cooling, indicates acidity of this excretion, and a ten- dency to deposit lithic acid in the crystallised form.Citron.colored, or yellowish-gIeen colored, remarkably transparent, with ail acidulous reaction, denotes the oxalate of lime diathesis.Pale straw-colored urine, or of a blueish-green tint, and having the smell of new hay, denotes sugar, and the presence of diabetes, in some one or other of its forms.Opalescent oily-looking urine, having a peculiar animal odor, also resembling that of the sweet or wild briar, denotes the cystic oxide diathesis.Pale-colored, wheyishlooking urine, opalescent, when passed, and having a strong peculiar urinous smell, is generally neutral, and soon becomes alkaline; it denotes a tendency to the phosphates.Very clear, colorless, transparent urine, devoid of smell and almost of taste, is generally copious, watery, and of very low specific gravity, showing a tendency to hysteria, and various other ner.vous affections, as well as spasm.Urine of this sort also often contains a large proportion of the alkalies, mostly carbonated.Urine perfectly transparent when passed, but becoming cloudy as it cools, and finally depositing reddish, yellow, or cream-colored sediments, shows a predominance of lithate of ammonia, and the sediment will readily dissolve on the application of heat.Urine cloudy when passed, and re.maining so after filtration, but which, on being heated after the addition of a little acetic acid, becomes opaque, and deposits a solid coagulum, contains albumen in some one or other of its modifications.Urine trans- parent when warm, but which on cooling deposits a sediment, and being heated becomes again trans- parent, but on continuing the heat becomes cloudy, and ultimately deposits a coagulum, owes these properties to lithate of ammonia in excess, with albumen.A very slight degree of temperature dissolves the lithate, but it requires a temperature of between 150°o r 160°Fah.to coagulate the albumen, the double opalescence, with intervening transparency, arising from the different degrees of temperature.Trans- parent urine, becoming cloudy on the application of laeat, will be found to owe that property to holding the phosphates, and probably some carbonate of lime in solution by carbonic acid in large excess.