Bile

Urine containing bile is yellow. froths on shaking, and a rag dipped in it and dried, is permanently yellow.f

Bile in the urine is generally due to liver disorders, or obstruction of the biliary ducts, and jaundice usually coexists. The urine, usually, is acid, with a variable specific gravity, and often contains albumen.

Pettenkoffer's Test For Bile

Boil, to precipitate the albumen; when cool, decant into a clean tube, and filter. Then place the tube in clean water, drop a piece of white sugar into the urine, and add slowly by drops two thirds of its bulk of sulphuric acid; in from fifteen minutes to an hour a reddish-brown color is produced.

Heller's Test. Add a little white of egg or albumen; coagulate with nitric acid, and a play of colors form from yellow to reddish brown.

Blood

Bloody urine is brown or red in color. Its reaction and specific gravity are variable.

Heat Test

Boiling coagulates the albumen of the blood and entraps the blood discs, which form a dirty coagulum.

Sulphuric Acid changes the color of the urine to a reddishbrown, revealing the presence of haematin. The appearance of blood corpuscles under the microscope confirms the diagnosis. It may ensue from injuries, calculi, pyelitis, Bright's disease, tumors of the bladder, cystitis, hyperaemia of kidney, nephritis; also in purpura, scarlet and typhus fevers, malaria, cholera, etc.

Chyle

Chyle in the urine shows a white color; reaction and specific gravity, variable. It is a disease of the tropics, the urine often resembling jelly, containing fat and albumen.

Test. Pour into the test tube half an ounce-of sulphuric ether to separate the fat; add the urine; take out some of it with a pipette and put on a watch glass; evaporate by heat, and the stain of fat remains.

Mucus

Mucus in some quantity always exists in the urine. It may be precipitated with acetic acid. When iodine is added to the acidulated urine, the mucin is colored and the epithelial cells are lendered distinct. Irritation of the urinary tract causes an increase of mucus;inflammation is indicated by pus in the urine.

Pus

Pus produces a milky appearance of the urine and causes a dense, white sediment. The urine quickly becomes alkaline, and contains albumen in proportion to the amount of pus present. Acid urine containing pus, when freshly voided, indicates that the pus came from the kidneys. When alkaline, it is inferred that the pus originates in the bladder. It may accompany gonorrhoea, gleet, leucorrhoea or mucous abscesses. Pyuria of a cystic or renal origin is of more moment.

Test

Allow the urine to settle; pour off the supernatant fluid and add liquor potassa. The pus is changed into a viscid gelatinous mass, adhering to the tube. Pus corpuscles are seen under the microscope.

Urea

Urea constitutes seventy or eighty per cent. of the nitrogenous constituents of the urine and represents the ash of those substances which have been burned up in the animal economy. The estimated amount of urea excreted by a healthy man is 512.4 grains per diem, the quantity fluctuating with the amount of nitrogenous food consumed and the rate of tissue transformation. Excessive muscular exercise increases it, but when the kidneys reach their limit of excretory power, it passes off in diarrhoea through the bowels.

*Prof. Witthaus. †Prof. S. E. Woody.

A diet of fat and farinaceous food, in addition to nitrogenous principles, lessens the amount of urea and the destruction of tissue. Excess of drinking water increases it, especially when taken during meals; table and other salts have the same effect. Moderate warmth diminishes it; fever increases it.