had a strong spirituous odour. The examination of the systems of respiration and circulation revealed no lesion. The urine was straw-yellow, of a strongly acid reaction, and 1.0315 specific gravity, contained 4 per cent. of sugar, much urea, and scarcely a trace of uric acid. Besides the strong peculiar odour, it offered no peculiarities. The patient her self complained of weakness, thirst, and pain in her stomach. On the morning after her admission she was in a sort of narcotized condition, and gave off a spirituous odour similar to that of chloroform, which was so intense, that after a little time it became perceptible in the whole ward, and was noticed by all other patients. One of the clinical assistants was misled to the opinion that chloroform had been administered to the patient during the night. The patient was almost unconscious, and lay there, the eyes half open, and all muscles relaxed. Her skin was cool (264° R., [91·5° F., 33.0° C.,] in the axilla; 26-0° R. in the mouth), as also the tongue, and the strongly smelling breath. The face was slightly flushed, the eyes surrounded by a halo, the looks fixed. The patient was like a person half under the in luence of chloroform; her extremities dropped like paralysed on being raised, and a few words could be elicited when her consciousness had been made to return for a moment by questioning with a loud voice. She had a small pulse of 92 beats per minute. The abdomen was meteoristic. As she had passed no water since the night, the catheter was applied, and a pound of urine was withdrawn, which was pale yellow, contained sugar (specific gravity 1027), and much of the odoriferous principle. Including this quantity, the patient had only passed ninety-three fluid ounces of urine during the last twenty-four hours; the secretion of urine then ceased entirely. The meteoristic swelling of the abdomen increased, she complained of much pain in the stomach in moments of returning consciousness, and died next morning, thirty hours after the beginning of this extraordinary condition.

The post-mortem examination revealed no particular lesion. in any organ except the intestinal canal, which was very much distended with gas, the inner surface covered with a thick, grayish-white mucous layer, and the inner membranes very much congested. The contents of the stomach were exactly like those of a fermenting distiller's butt, and consisted of a brownish, flaky mixture, which evolved a spirituous pricking odour, and also the peculiar odour of the other secretions. It had an acid reaction, and gave the tests for grape-sugar. The microscope revealed some fibres

of flesh, some starch-corpuscles in a disintegrating condition, and numerous yeast-cells.

The urine on distillation yielded an alkaline, clear fluid, which had the odour of ammonia, carbolic acid, and an empyreumatic spirituous substance; and after neutralization with dilute sulphuric acid and repeated rectification, allowed the characteristic odour to appear more freely. The distillate was again rectified over chloride of sodium, and afterwards once more for itself in the water-bath, when a colourless, clear fluid, strongly refracting light, of neutral reaction and biting taste, was obtained, which was easily inflammable, and burned with a bright, strongly lighting flame. Though its odour was very much like that of aldehyde, yet it could not be that substance, as it had a neutral reaction. There was therefore only the possibility of its being either methylalcohol or acetone left over. Methyl-alcohol was excluded, as the fluid became brown when mixed with sulphuric acid.. As caustic potash produced a brown resinous body in the fluid, and solutions of oxyde of silver caused no reduction in it, it could be nothing else but acetone (CHO).

The residue of distillation contained nothing besides carbolic acid, which, according to Petters (p. 89) and Städeler, is present in every urine.

The blood had a strong odour of acetone. But its quantity was not sufficient to isolate that substance. It contained sugar, and was faintly alkaline. The watery extract of the lungs, subject to distillation, yielded a neutral distillate, smelling of newly baked bread, which, after repeated rectification, under addition of sulphuric acid, and afterwards of chloride of sodium, lastly after distillation from the waterbath, gave drops which strongly smelled of acetone, yielded the above reactions, and were combustible.

The presence of acetone in the urine and blood was therefore established, and it is most probable that to the anæsthetic effect of this substance, diffused through the whole system as it was, the comatose condition and fatal end of this case were due.

The contents of the stomach did not yield acetone, but alcohol seemed to be present. The mucus of the glandular surface of the stomach, after the latter had been washed with distilled water, was found to possess the property of transforming starch into sugar and gum, and sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid. The contents of the stomach possessed the same power, which is not possessed by normal gastric juice. The influence of saliva was carefully excluded by Dr. Petters, in the experiment with the mucus from the immediate glandular membrane of the stomach.

THIS hydrocarbon was, in 1850, discovered by Scherer,1 in the mother-liquor of creatine, obtained from the juice of the muscle of the heart. It was afterwards investigated by Cloetta,2 who found it in the parenchyme of most organs, the lungs, spleen, kidneys, and also in the urine of a patient affected by Bright's disease. Vohl found a substance in the unripe fruit of Phaseolus vulgaris, which he at first termed phaseomannite, the identity of which with inosite he afterwards demonstrated.

Mode of obtaining Inosite.

When the inspissated juice of flesh (or of the organs mentioned), from which creatine has been obtained, is mixed with strong spirits of wine, it becomes turbid. When put aside, potash salts begin to crystallize, but on further addition of spirits of wine, inosite crystallizes; the mother-liquor is now poured off, the crystals are separated mechanically, and by

1 'Ann. d. Chem. und Pharm.' Bd. lxxiii, p. 322; lxxxi, p. 375.

Ann. d. Chem und Pharm.,' Bd. xcix, p. 289. Canstatt's Jahresbericht,' über 1856, vol. i, p. 180.

3 Ibid.

means of a little warm water, which dissolves inosite quicker than the alkaline salts, and deposits it on cooling in crystals.

Physical and Chemical Properties.

Inosite crystallizes in the clinorhombic system, the typical form being most probably a clinorectangular prism. The crystals mostly group together; more rarely they are single, and then become sometimes two eighths to three eighths of an inch long. When exposed to the air they decay by losing water of crystallization. They taste very sweet, are easily soluble in water, little soluble in strong spirits of wine, insoluble in alcohol or ether. From the solution in boiling spirits of wine almost the whole of the inosite crystallizes on cooling in small glistening particles, which are very much like cholesterine.

Inosite is not changed by boiling with dilute sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, or with caustic alkalies.

When heated above 210° C. (410° F.), it fuses into a clear fluid, which, when cooled down rapidly, crystallizes in needles, but, when allowed to cool slowly, becomes a hornlike amorphous mass. When exposed to a stronger heat, inosite burns with a lighting flame, without leaving any residue.

A concentrated solution of caustic potash produces no change of colour on boiling with a solution of inosite; no change takes place when heated with potash and sulphate of copper; with bile and sulphuric acid inosite does not yield the reaction of sugar.

Inosite is not capable of undergoing vinous fermentation. But a solution of it treated with cheese and chalk at a temperature of about 40 C. (104° F.) for some length of time, produces lactic and butyric acid.

If a solution of inosite, or a mixture containing inosite, is evaporated in a platinum spoon to near dryness, and the residue moistened with ammonia and some chloride of calcium, and then again cautiously evaporated to dryness, a vivid rosy colour is produced; this reaction admits of the diagnosis of one fiftieth of a grain of inosite.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

URERYTHRINE OR PURPURINE.

THE elementary composition of this substance is unknown. It contains above 60 per cent. of carbon, and about 6 per cent. of hydrogen, the rest being made up of oxygen, and a small quantity of nitrogen.

History.

It was first described by Proust as rosacic acid, and believed to constitute the entire bulk of the lateritious deposits. After uric acid had been found in these deposits, Prout assumed purpuric acid, in combination with ammonia (which purpurate of ammonia he erroneously believed to be identical with the murexide of Liebig and Wöhler), to be an admixture to these deposits. The contemporaneous researches of Vogel, Fromherz, Guggert, Duvernoy, G. Bird, Simon, Scherer, Landerer, and Heller seemed to confirm the opinion of Prout as to the acid nature of purpurine, but the inability of chemists to produce salts of this substance with bases militates against that opinion. The most extensive and also the most productive researches on this substance have been made by Heller.' But notwithstanding his most lucid description, little attention has been paid to this substance, and this circumstance, and the various names under which it has passed, have produced some confusion regarding its identity. Thus Virchow erroneously believes G. Bird's purpurine to be identical with cyanurine or uroglaucine.

Ueber das Uroerythrin als Bestandtheil des Harns in Krankheiten, Heller's Archiv,' vol. vi, p. 361.