Whatever may be the position of British pharmacists in comparison with
those of other countries, it cannot be said that they have paid the
attention to the analysis of urine which the subject has received from
pharmacists on the Continent. Considering the importance of the
subject, this curious neglect can only be attributed to the fact that
the pharmacist in Great Britain is but slowly attaining the position
of chemical expert to the physician, which his foreign _confrere_ has
so long held with credit and even distinction. In France, for example,
M. Méhu, whose name is familiar to readers of this journal, is looked
upon as one of the leading authorities on morbid urine and its
analysis, and yet a list of goodly pharmaceutical papers shows that,
as the medical analyst, he has not forgotten his connection with pure
pharmacy.
There are several points about urinary analysis which entitle it to a
very high position in the estimation of pharmacists. In the first
place, the physician is no more likely to be fonder of the test tube
than of the pestle, of analyzing urine than of compounding his own
medicines. Leading men in the profession are more and more setting
their faces against the dispensing doctor, and there are numbers among
them who admit that they succeed no better as analysts than they do as
dispensers.
Some old fashioned practitioners trouble themselves very little about
their patients' urine, except, perhaps, in respect of sugar and
albumen. On the other hand, numbers of leading physicians, including
especially those highly educated gentlemen who cultivate a consulting
practice, are in the habit of pushing urinary analysis almost to an
excess. One well-known specialist of the writer's acquaintance, with
an extensive West End practice, makes quantitative determinations of
urea, uric acid, and total acidity, in addition to conducting other
diagnostic experiments, on every occasion that he interviews his
patients. By this means he has accumulated in his case books a mass of
data which he considers most valuable as an aid to diagnosis, and
through that to successful treatment.
Pharmacists are proverbially neat-handed, as Mr. Martindale would say,
and their habit of conducting dispensing operations which involve the
dexterous manipulation of very small quantities of material fit them
admirably to undertake volumetric and other rapid analytical
determinations. Compared with the doctor there is no doubt that in
this matter the chemist is _facile princeps_, and from the nature of
their respective occupations such could only have been expected. A few
chemists throughout the country lay themselves out to save their local
doctors from unwelcome test tube practice, and these almost to a man
find it pay. Some charge a handsome fee to patients, and a small one
when the analysis comes through the physician. Others find it to their
interest to furnish medical men with qualitative reports on sugar or
albumen gratuitously. Although this practice has certain obvious
drawbacks, if a doctor sends his prescriptions to a chemist, the
latter is often willing to gratuitously perform his chemical work. In
the present article we propose to describe briefly but fully the
methods which have been found of most value in practice.