THE ANALYSIS OF URINE.


INTRODUCTION.

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.