TREATMENT OF POTT'S DISEASE.A Clinical Lecture delivered before the New York Post-Graduate School aud Hospital, Sept. 26, 1894.

Abstract

undertook to prove experimentally on his own person that lithium administered for the elimination of uric acid from the system, not only failed to accom¬ plish the purpose, but "diminished the excretion of uric acid." In defense of this position he quotes from Rose to the effect that lithium forms "insolu¬ ble compounds with phosphate of soda and triple phosphate of ammonia and soda, salts generally present in animal fluids." The work of Rose has not been accessible to me and I, therefore, am not in a position to assert whether or not Haig properly quoted or understood him, but I find that Dr. Hal¬ berstadt asserts that "sodium phosphate causes, in not too attenuated solutions of lithium salts, a crys¬ talline precipitate of normal lithium phosphate ;"'" and Sir Dyce Duckworth" states that "the normal and bi-urate of lithium easily dissolve in alkalin fluids, also in phosphate of sodium." " This is in accordance with my own experience, but I found also by actual experiment that no precipita¬ tion took place, even after several days, when such solutions are further diluted to 1 part in 250 or more parts of water before being mixed. When we take into consideration the minute amounts of sodium