THE RETENTION OF URIC ACID

Somehow, uric acid does not lose its popularity as a subject of discussion. Scarcely a year passes that does not bring significant new facts relating to the chemical physiology of this substance. With them goes the formulation of new hypotheses and the rejection of others. The physician and, to a large degree, the layman have, however, become extremely cautious when reading facile publications about uric acid. What Barker¹ wrote twenty years ago as an introduction to his "Truth and Poetry Concerning Uric Acid" is equally applicable today:

In the slow but steady advance which medicine is making, new facts are often established for a long time before they meet with general acceptance, and old theories have had their foundations washed out from under them years or decades before their fallacies have become generally recognized by the profession. It is easy to be too severe in criticizing the inertia of