Clinical Chemistry Flashcards
A branch of medical science that involves the analysis of chemical components of body fluids.
Clinical chemistry
Concerned with diagnosing and monitoring disease by measuring the concentration of chemicals, principally in blood plasma and urine. Occasionally, chemical analysis of feces, and other body fluids (like cerebrospinal and pleural fluid).
Clinical chemistry
A Greek physician is considered as the “Father of Medicine” and the author of the Hippocratic oath. He started the belief that diseases are caused by imbalances of humor in the body.
Hippocrates
He introduced the anatomic approach to the disease process and explained diseases in terms of localized pathologic anatomy, rather than as attributable to an imbalance of the humor diffused throughout the system.
Giovanni Morgagni
He is considered to be the “Father of Modern Chemistry”. He recognized and named two elements, oxygen, and hydrogen. He discovered the role of oxygen in the process of combustion and that respiration is a slow combustion process
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
They believed that living organisms contain a “vital force” that was the very essence of life. They also believed that processes within living organisms were unique and could not be duplicated in the laboratory.
Vitalists
They believed that animals are no more than “machines” and that life could be explained fully by chemical and physical principles and properties alone.
Mechanists
Believed that man is not unique. The belief that there is continuity between man and animals as attested by Darwin’s publication “Origin of Species” which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology
Darwinists
He was successful in isolating urea from urine samples. He also believed that chemical laboratories should be located near the wards, where chemical analysis of urine excretions of the sick could be carried out.
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy
He was able to synthesize urea in vitro by evaporating an isomeric solution of ammonium cyanate proving that “organic” substances could be synthesized in vitro without any “vital force” in a living organism. This created a bridge between the “organic” and “inorganic” worlds. In doing so, he gave the first proof that vitalism is wrong.
Friedrich Wohler
He was able to synthesize organic compounds such as ethanol, formic acid, and benzene in vitro via chemical treatments of inorganic compounds.
Marcellin Berthelot
He discovered that glycogen was formed by the liver which contradicted the vitalism belief that only plants can produce complex compounds.
Claude Bernard
He was the first to observe that urea and albumin concentration in plasma decreases as their concentration increases in the urine of the patient.
John Bostock
Credited as the first to make the true connection between chemistry and medical practice. He was a vitalist but advocated the benefits to be derived from the application of chemistry to physiology in the treatment of disease. Favored the study of physics and chemistry by medical students
William Prout
Stressed the practical diagnostic value of chemistry. Urged the medical school curriculum to include first-rate instruction in English, where “Medical men would be much better served if they spent some time in acquiring knowledge about chemistry and physics instead of learning some Latin and Greek.”
Henry Bence Jones
