Uric Acid

An excess of albuminous roods, as occurs in the overeating of meats, nuts, eggs, etc., owing to the inability of the system to oxidise or properly burn them out, results in the deposition of uric acid within the tissues of the body. Uric acid diminishes the alkalinity of the blood, hence lessens resistance to disease; not only this, but it produces serious mischief and disease of the blood vessels, producing hardening of the arteries. In addition to this it is one cause of calculi or stone in the kidney or liver. Uric acid irritates the nerves and tissues, producing rheumatism, as seen in the various forms of sciatica, neuritis, neuralgia, lumbago, and gout; and owing to its action on the arteries it often is responsible for paralysis, apoplexy, etc.

It is interesting to notice that uric acid, the "acid in the blood," when obtained by the chemist, in a state of purity, is a white, fluffy, crystalline solid, without odor and taste, and difficult of solution in water, 1 - 15.000, which explains its ready deposition from the blood, seen in uric acid as calculi or stones, in the liver or kidneys, or again it may be in the cartilages of the joints. The excessive use of albuminous foods of whatever character, meat, eggs, nuts, peas, beans, cheese, etc., may give rise to this excessive formation of uric acid, leading to the development of the uric-acid diathesis or constitution, with its accompanying train of ills sick headache, neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, nervousness, nervous prostration in its many forms, neurasthenia, and a host of other ill-defined symptoms, the true cause of which in many cases is but little suspected.

Food Perversion

The decomposition, or after-digestion products of an excess of albuminous, nitrogenous, or proteid foods, all one and the same thing, end then in the formation of uric acid.

It is also interesting to notice that an excess of fats likewise produces harmful effects, ending in the production of oxybutyric acid, acetone bodies, and other degradation products more or less allied to the fatty acids of rancid butter.

Likewise an excess of carbo-hydrates, as occurs from the too free use of starches, may end in the deposition of fat within the tissues, striking evidences, of which, are to be observed, on every hand, in all fat people.

Two eminent German physiologists, Bureau and Schur, have demonstrated that in man the liver destroys only about one-half of the uric acid circuating in the blood, whether derived from external sources as a meat diet, or generated within the body by ordinary tissue changes.

When it is considered that under the usual and ordinary conditions the body is actively and fully engaged in disposing of the urea and uric acid, regularly and normally produced by a proper diet, no one need expect to be free from uric acid poisoning who takes into his system foods containing these compounds already formed, practically making a double quantity of uric acid.

Speaking generally, meat may be said to contain uric acid to the extent of from 5 to 15 grains to the pound, and their viscera (liver, kidneys, etc.) from 6 to 12 grains to the pound, and these quantities are introduced into the bodies of those who swallow them. Then the alkaloids of tea, coffee, and cocoa are, as is well known, xanthines, and these, for disease purposes, are equivalent to uric acid; while several vegetable substances contain considerable quantities of xanthines, some of them probably as much as meat. Thus their administration produces just the same effects as the administration of uric acid, into which xanthin is easily converted.

One other fact which we have to bear carefully in mind is that introduced uric acid interferes with the solubility, and so with the excretion of the uric acid that is formed in the body. Every one forms uric acid every day in about the relation of 35 grains of urea and one grain of uric acid for each ten pounds of body weight.

A person's liver and kidneys may be able to destroy and eliminate the uric acid produced in his own body, while not at all prepared to deal with ten or twenty times this quantity.