Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/33

 not suppose that chemistry has done nothing for us. In its application to the detection of symptoms it has been very valuable. For instance. Bright never could have determined the point he has established, had he merely used the test of heat in examining urine for albumen, and his first tables were constructed on that plan. We all know now that heat precipitates phosphate of lime, as well as albumen, in a multitude of instances, and therefore that these tables would have shown that coagulable urine (as it was then called) constantly occurred without the concomitant lesion of kidney. Bright’s discovery might thus have been left as a prize for some other observer, whose chemical knowledge enabled him to apply a more perfect method of examination. Fortunately, Bright’s tables were reconstructed, a correct chemical method of determining the presence of albumen was adopted, and the exceptional cases which threatened confusion disappeared from the return. Here, chemistry, by determining a symptom, helped us to one of the most important pathological discoveries of modem times. But its minor services of this kind are by no means despicable. We are all familiar with its use in