ABSTRACT
The simplicity of the reaction with silver nitrate made chloride the first inorganic component to be determined in urine. The Chloridometer instrument, capable of reading directly in millieqivalents per Liter, was available commercially from American Instrument Company and Buchler Instruments and provided an accurate, rapid and automatic analysis of chloride in biologic samples. Henry Bence Jone administered lithium chloride orally or by subcutaneous injection to guinea pigs. When analytically pure compounds of potassium, sodium, lithium, barium, calcium and strontium were heated in the Bunsen flame, they emitted very sharp colored line spectra characteristic for each metal. A more rapid colorimetric method of estimating the inorganic phosphorus of blood and urine without having to precipitate the phosphate as ammonium phosphomolybdate was first described by Richard D. Bell and Edward A. Doisy. Quantitation of the precipitate has also been made by titrimetric and colorimetric procedures. The solubility and mechanical loss of precipitate during washing is the greatest source of error.
