The Determination of Uric Acid in the Blood

In a recent number of this Journal, Bulmer, Eagles, and Hunter’ have published a study of the direct determination of uric acid in the blood as proposed by the present writer,2 in which the conclusion is reached that figures obtained by the direct method are “unreliable.” We feel that a few words of comment upon that paper may be of service in connection with the still unsettled question of the determination of uric acid in the blood. The larger proportion of the experimental work recorded by Bulmer, Eagles, and Hunter is concerned with analyses of animal blood of various species (rabbit, cat, dog, guinea pig, and ox). The investigators feel that, if the method cannot be applied to animal bloods and yield correct results, this constitutes presumptive evidence against its use in human blood. Such a conclusion hardly seems warranted. The present writer was fully aware that the direct method could not be applied to animal bloods, and so stated at the time the method was described. If methods were to be rejected because of what might be present in blood or urine, it is doubtful whether any of our present analytical methods for these fluids would survive. Fortunately the position taken by Bulmer, Eagles, and Hunter is not generally accepted, as is evidenced by the continued use of Folin’s standard method for creatinine determination in urine in spite of the fact that urine of diabetics frequently contains enough acetone and diacetic acid to render the method inapplicable. Indeed, Bulmer, Eagles, and