Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

122/440 (page 106)

albumen contained in tlie urine or the blood in cases of albuminuria, tbat is, if it could be shown that this albumen injected into the blood or subcutaneously, was, like egg-albu- men, capable of producing albuminuria. It is true that, con- nected with this subject, we have a single isolated statement by Stokvis, which has been already incidentally referred to (see p. 95). As an exception to, and differing from, the ^reat majority of his other experiments in this direction, he found that the albuminous urine of a patient, free from any manifest disease of the kidney, produced albuminuria in one dog and one rabbit, the symptom disappearing in a few days. We cannot suppose that this extraordinary result was due to any oversight or confusion; had any such existed, Stokvis must have discovered them, for these two experiments are inconsistent with the conclusions warranted by all the others, and must therefore remain as unexplained exceptions. For the present, however, it will be well not to invest them with any great amount of significance, but to regard them •only as an index for further researches in this direction. Until the time comes that they are confirmed, the question as to the existence in diseases of a modification of the albu- minous substances, capable of producing an albuminuria not to be designated peptonuria or propeptonuria, must be regarded as unsettled. In like manner the question as to the means whereby any modification of albuminous substances of the blood takes place, must be considered as still awaiting solution. There are many possibilities, but at present there is no theory which can be proved and certainly none which can be disproved. It is therefore possible that, in accordance with the theory especially favoured by Prout among English observers, ab- normal processes of digestion are responsible for the passage into the blood of an albumen differing from the normal sub- stance ; or that under the influence of some kind of morbid condition in the blood and fluids of the body, such altera- tions take place; as the old doctrines of crasis were always ready to assume. Inasmuch, howevei', as we are not as yet able to recognise with certainty any single morbid modifi- ■cation of albumen in the blood and fluids, we ought in this matter to assume an attitude of reserve, if not of incredulity.