The role of uric acid in physiology and pathology has long formed a theme for unrestricted discussion and controversy in scientific literature. The wealth of published contributions on this subject abounds in the most characteristic specimens of what a recent medical writer has aptly termed "truth and poetry about uric acid." Nevertheless the student of the physiology of uric acid can not fail to recognize a number of distinct epochs representing the introduction of new discoveries and consequent altered points of view in the interpretation of familiar phenomena. When the secret of each novel attitude is revealed it no longer becomes difficult to follow the march of progress in science; and, what is all-important, we are thus enabled to revise or formulate anew the problems with the solution of which advancement is coincident. This society, so happily inaugurated "for the diffusion of the knowledge of the medical sciences," will accomplish