Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

68/440 (page 52)

frequently observed, and its appearance Has been often con- nected with the extraordinary muscular exertion and the accompanying increased arterial pressure.^ That the pressure in the human subject is increased by muscular exertion may bo confidently assumed from the analogous effects observed in experiments on animals, and from the condition of the organs of circulation, resembling as it does that whicb is produced by raising the temperature (see p. 48), and, besides this, positive proof is furnished by the experiments of Zadek, which have been already referred to. He found that active muscular exertion (running, for example) was accompanied by an increase of the arterial pressure by about one-fourth of the normal degree. But in addition to this, in all mus- cular exertion of any degree of inteusity, as daily experience' teaches us, and as countless experiments have proved beyond doubt, th.e escape of water through tlie skin and lungs in the form of perspiration and vapour is enormously increased, and as a result the urine contains less water; we have,, therefore, a perfect combination of the two conditious which we have laid down at the commencement as essential for distinguishing that form of albuminuria dependent upon blood-pressure, that is to say, increase of the arterial pressure and simultaneous diminution of the water of the secretion, and these conditions are fulfilled under the cir- cumstances before us as decidedly as, or even more so than, when the temperature is raised by experiment. For if the latter could be supposed to be open to any slight objection as to its validity as a demonstration, nothing of this kind can arise with, respect to muscular exertion, and I cannot conceive of any well-founded hesitation in accepting the explanation which I have given. But for all this, the attempt has been made to explain the process in another way, and this has been done from the standpoint of Rune- berg's theory by Edlefsen, who has been followed by Rune- berg himself. Confiding in, the correctness of this theory,, which assumes that the escape of albumen is due to a diminution and not to an increase of the normal pressure in ' To meet any possible objection it may here be remarked that in the muscular exertion of the healthy subjects, and also in the majority of the- pathological cases, there was no symptom of dyspnce.i, or risk of suffocation