Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

124/440 (page 108)

tion from the parotids, previously filtered and found perfectly non-albutninouSj now contained a marked proportion of egg- albumen. If it be desired to draw any conclusion from this observation, it may be assumed as probable, that not only the glomerular vessels, whose action in this respect has been proved, but likewise the interstitial vascular system parti- cipates with the epithelium of the uriniferous tubules in the excretion of egg-albumen in the kidney. Besides, the latter portions of the kidney may, as already stated, in consequence of morbid changes in the condition of the blood, indirectly contribute towards the production of albuminuria, inasmuch as the latter gives rise to derangement of nutrition and degeneration of the epithelium, conditions which, in the way already described, lead to the excretion of albumen. VI. Certain Peculiar Forms of Morbid Albuminuria. In the foregoing sections we have become acquainted with so many varying conditions which may assist in the production of albuminuria, that we cannot agree with the attempts which have been made to attribute to a single cause all those forms of albuminuria which do not originate in the coarser disorders of the kidney. How the conditions which are submitted to our consideration, viz. the state of the circulation and of the blood-pressure, the condition of the membranes concerned in the secretion, and the state of the blood, act in various diseases, is in a general way too little known for us to be able to estimate the influence each exerts in every case. But this much we know, that in the majority of diseased states the separate conditions mutually influence each other, so that it is very difficult to discover in every instance the really active condition, and altogether impossible always to point out the only one that is so. The conditions are proportionately simple in a few cases only, and these have been described in their proper places in foregoing pages; we refer especially to the albumiuuria in venous congestion (page 71, et seq.), in convulsive conditions (page 51, et seq.), and at any rate in many forms of poison- ing (pages 55 and 80). In all other cases the conditions aro