Abstract
By the end of the last century the concept of nitrogen balance or equilibrium was well established. The measurement of nitrogenous compounds in foods, urine and faeces was technically simple, and the balance between intake and excretion had been studied by a number of workers. It was known that for a healthy adult animal or human being there was an equilibrium between the intake and excretion of nitrogenous compounds: nitrogen was ingested mainly as proteins, and excreted as a number of smaller molecules, most of which had been identified. The main excretory compound is urea; it was the synthesis of urea from ammonium carbamate by Wohler in 1828 that led to the abandoning of the older concept of a difference between ‘organic’ compounds that contained some ‘vital principle’ and ‘inorganic’ compounds that did not.
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