Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

62/440 (page 46)

assertion contradicts tlie otlier, and tlae question still waits decision. At tlio same time, Litten's experiments, in which no albumen was found, must be allowed to possess the greatest force as demonstrations; for, though it is easy to understand how in such serious operations the urine becomes albuminous owing to incidental causes, we cannot readily imagine, if the increase of pressure per se caused albuminuria, how this could be accidentally masked, always supposing that proper methods were used for discovering the albumen, of which in this case there can be no doubt. If, therefore, Litten's experiments be regarded as demonstrative, the result thereof corresponds exactly with our hypothesis (see p. 42). If albumen is, as a general rule, not to be found in urine, increase of the arterial pressure, unless the quantity of urine be simultaneously diminished, will assuredly not cause any albumen to appear. The experiments in which the renal nerves are divided have yielded results more in harmony with each other, mainly because in performing them it is difficult to avoid pressure or injury to the renal vessels. The latter causes can per se produce albuminuria, and this fact may explain why some observers, as in recent times von Wittich and Vulpian, have noticed it after dividing the nerves, while others, as M. Herrmann and Knoll, have observed this symptom only after injuries incidental to the operation (49). Considerable import- ance must be attached to these negative results, for the same reasons as in the experiments in which the aorta was tied. The same thing then occurs as after the division of the nerves, as a result of which the blood-pressure and the rapidity of the current in the kidney are increased, that is to say, we are not able to discover albumen, because in all these experiments the quantity of the urine is very considerably increased. Greater results than those of all these experiments are, as already said, to be expected from a method which increases the arterial pressure, and that alone, and at the same time diminishes the water of the urine so that the discovery of the albumen is facilitated. Such a method we possess in the elevation of the bodily temperature. That this should raise the general blood-pressure can be a priori mf erred from the well-known changes which take place in the blood-vessels