192

     In a purely vegetable diet such as that of the prisoners in Bengal a high uric
acid excretion would not be expected, as vegetable food contains only small
amounts of purin bodies. The pulses, however, do contain a fair quantity of
nucleins.

     We have made a good many observations on the amount of uric acid excreted
by Bengali prisoners and find the quantity to be very much what would be
expected from a vegetarian diet. Thus, in 690 uric acid determinations the
amount excreted per man daily was, on the average, 0.44 grms.

     The variations met with were small and never fluctuated for the Bengal types
of diets outside 0.35 and 0.57 grm. per man daily. These figures include deter-
minations on prisoners on both the Bengali and Behari types of diets—the inter-
change of ten ozs. of rice for ten ozs. of wheat ata does not appear to make any
difference in the amount of uric acid excreted. The dals excepted, rice, wheat ata
and vegetables may be looked on as almost forming a purin-free diet so that the
uric acid is derived almost entirely from the dals—the exogenous—and from
tissue metabolism—endogenous—the breaking down of nuclein-containing sub-
stances.

     The method of estimation made use of in all our uric acid determinations was
that introduced by Gowland Hopkins¹, which is by far the most accurate and
simplest process.

6.—Xanthin or alloxur bodies or Purin bodies, including uric acid with a number of
closely allied substances.

     The Xanthin bases—xanthin, hypoxanthin, guanin and adenin—like uric
acid have an endogenous source which is probably the nuclein of the tissue-cells,
and an exogenous source furnished by the food-stuffs which contain nucleins and
purins. According to Camerer, Salkowski, Walker, Hall and others the amount
of xanthin bases in the daily urine amounts to from 30 to 50 milligrammes in
Europeans.

     We have carried out a number of observations with Walker Hall's purino-
meter and find the average quantity of purin bases excreted per man to be about
48 milligrammes per day. This amount seems rather high, but it represents about
9 per cent. of the uric acid excreted, on the same diet by the same prisoners, which is
nearly the usually accepted amount. Von Noorden states that the quantity of
these bodies rarely amounts to more than 8 per cent. of the uric acid excreted at
the same time. Accepting Walker Hall's method as giving accurate results, it is
very likely that the dads of the Bengali diet supply a fairly large amount of purin
bases.

     We did not go into any detail on this point, and simply state the results
obtained from an investigation carried out on twenty prisoners observed for nine
consecutive days.

¹ Journ. of Path. and Bacteriology, 1893.