Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

38/440 (page 22)

sometimes, and even under physiological circumstances, tliey appear in larger quantities easily recognisable, and that therefore we must admit the existence of a physiological glycosuria and oxaluria. Considering that there are admitted limits to the. physiological increase in the normal excretion of sugar or oxalic acid, why should not those cases of the excretion of alhumen in healthy men be regarded as exhibiting simply the physiological increase of a normal process ? Nothing prevents us from assuming the occurrence of a physiological albuminuria which takes place just as physio- logical glycosuria, oxaluria, or other physiological increase of those normal urinary constituents, the discovery of which is attended with difl&culty,—that is to say, that certain conditions may cause them to make their appearance in larger and there- fore more demonstrable quantities. The conditions mth regard to the appearance of albumen are by no means more unfavorable than for that of other substances. As regards the origin of the urinary albumen in all these cases, there is no lack of a source extremely rich in this sub- stance. This, as a matter of course, is the blood flowing in the Malpighian tufts, for the blood of the interstitial vascular system, or the lymph, or any other source, under normal conditions, needs not be considered, and this statement requires no further explanation. The albumen therefore must have its origin in the blood of the Malpighian tufts. This statement corresponds, to some extent, with the theory of the excretion of urine, which for some time past has been advanced by Kiiss (26), von Wittich (27), and Henle (28), but which has met with few supporters and many opponents, in the first place, because it makes it difficult to explain the absence of albumen in ordinary normal urine, and likewise because it is not altogether in accordance with the fact recently discovered of the slight diffusibility of albumen as a colloidal substance. After what has been stated with regard to physiological albuminuria no importance can be attributed to the first objection, the fact being that normal urine is often found to be albuminous, if properly examined, and all causes may be assumed to account for albumen bcmg a normal constituent of the urine, though its presence cannot always be demonstrated. As regards the other objection,