Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

49/440 (page 33)

is pretty certain that no direct increase of albumen takes place in the further passage through the urinary tubules, and there is no ground for the supposition that, owing to the absorption of water with or without salts, the contents of the tubes become relatively richer in albumen. It is well known that no decision has yet been arrived at on the question as to whether any absorption really takes place from the uriniferous tubules, as is assumed in Ludwig's theory of the secretion of urine, but in opposition to the general and well-grounded opinion on this point. It is, nevertheless, conceivable that absorption might occur, if not in all parts of the urinary tubules, at all events, perhaps, in that portion contained in the renal medulla, which is so copiously supplied with veins and lymphatic vessels, that is therefore in the straight tubes, and in the ascending and descending limbs. But if this be so, we could not expect that albumen actually in a state of solution should be excluded from absorption. For if this latter process involves all portions of the fluid contents of the urinaiy tubules, it would affect the albumen as one of them; but if, as Ludwig's theory requires us to assume, materials are selected for absorption, the specific constituents of the urine being excluded, the albumen must certainly be absorbed. For least of all can the albumen be considered as a specific constituent, and when it is present in a state of solution, and not merely floating about in a fluid, it is constantly taken up wherever absorption is going on. The urine, which therefore represents a mixture of the transudation from the glomerular vessels and of the secretion of the uriniferous tubules, is probably on the whole more concentrated, that is, richer in other fixed constituents, but poorer in albumen, than the transudation peculiar in that respect, and whose proportion of albumen must be less than the lowest percentage of any transudation. If we represent the percentage of albumen in the transudation from the glomeruli as a, and the amount of the secretion from the glands which is added thereto as n, then, if no absorption takes place, the amount of albumen in the urine as a whole a will amount only to It is, therefore, not hard to 100 8