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.
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