A Course of Lectures on Urine, Urinary Deposits, and Calculi
Authors: L. Beale
Journal: BMJ (1860)

Uric Acid resembling Albumen; Cases.Apparent Absence of Albumen in Urine which contains a large Quantity; Cases.Cause of the Precipitation of Albumen by Heat beingprevented by a Trace of Nitric Acid.Other Tests for Albumen.On Estimating the Quantity of Albumen.Peculiar Substance in Urine allied to Albumen.Of the Importance of Albumen in Urine in a Clinical point of view.Dropsy in Disease of the Kidney.BILE.Tests.Nitric Acid.Heller's Test.Pettenkofer's Test.Yellow Colour of the Cells, etc., in the Urinary Deposit. SUGAR.General Characters of the Urine in Diabetes.Diabetic Sugar.Tests for Diabetic Sugar; Moore's Test: Trommer's Test; Barreswill's and other Solutions.On Testing for Sugar when only Traces are present.Circum- stances interfering with the Action of Trommers Test.Of the Yeast Test.M1aumenk's or the Perchloride of Tin Test.Bismuth Test.Of Estimating the Quantity of Sugar; volumetrically; by Fermentation; by Dr. Garrod's Method; by the Polarising Saccharimeter.Circumstances under which Sugar is excreted in the Urine.Analyses of Urine in Diabetes.OTHER SOLUBLE SUBSTANCES WHICH ARE NOT PRESENT IN HEALTH.LEUCINE.TYROSINE.INOSITE.ACETONE.CYSTINE.[Continued fiom page 317.]Sugar is not present in healthy urine.Occasionally, however, traces of this substance are met with in the urine of persons who are not suffering from any particular symptoms.It may be excreted for days, or even for a few weeks at a time, in small proportion.It does not follow that all such cases are to pass into confirmed diabetes, but they should be carefully watched by the practitioner.Sometimes, after abstinence from food for some hours, a meal, consisting entirely of starchy matter, will cause sugar to appear in the urine, and if a person, under these circumstances, take a quantity of cane-sugar, a temporary diabetic condition will almost certainly be produced.Instances, in which sugar has been detected in the urine daily for several weeks, and recovery taken place, have occurred.Diabetes may last for many years, but generally it causes death in from one to four years.Although much light has been thrown upon the production of sugar in the animal body of late, no satisfactory explanation of these cases has yet been offered, nor do we know anything of the condition of the system which precedes and ushers in the fatal form of diabetes.Two kinds of diabetes have been described-diabetes mel.litus and diabetes insipidus.I have already had occasion to allude to the latter, and have mentioned that in this condition large quantities of pale urine, containing little solid matter, and, it need scarcely be repeated, no sugar, are passed, it is therefore quite unnecessary to describe this condition as a distinct disease; the term diabetes should never be applied to it.Diabetes is sometimes called mellituria or glucosuria.Diabetic urine is usually of a very pale colour, and possesses a peculiar odour, which has been compared to that of violets, apples, new hay, whey, horses' urine, musk, and sour milk.Such comparisons serve only to show how difficult it is to define, in words, a particular odour.No doubt all of you are well acquainted with this peculiar smell, which it is useless to attempt to describe.