UROBILIN: ITS CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Abstract

<h3>I. INTRODUCTION</h3> The numerous studies made on urobilin and urobilinogen during the forty-four years since its discovery by Jaffé, while adding much to our knowledge of its chemistry and its clinical occurrence, still leave much to be desired as to methods for its estimation and as to its clinical significance. Some investigators are inclined to look on it still from the point of view of hemoglobin metabolism, while others consider it only in reference to hepatic insufficiency. Its relationship to the presence or absence of bile in the intestine has been a subject of considerable dispute, but in the main the contention of Friedrich von Müller, that it can originate only from the bacterial decomposition of bile reaching the intestine, is accepted. Nevertheless, the assertion of Fischler, that it can originate in the liver itself, seems to us probable. Whether it is then formed within the liver cell or