Selected monographs : comprising Albuminuria in health and disease ... Some considerations on the nature and pathology of typhus and typhoid fever ... Moveable kidney in women.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs : comprising Albuminuria in health and disease ... Some considerations on the nature and pathology of typhus and typhoid fever ... Moveable kidney in women. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    23/440 (page 7)
    albumin has rendered probable the existence of a pure serinuria, but the failure to detect the globulin has been doubtless due to imperfect methods of examination. The foregoing statements have conclusively shown that even when the term “ albuminuria ” is used in its present limited signification, it does not describe the excretion of one and the same albuminous substance. And in addition to this, albuminous substances have been recently discovered in the urine which are deficient in the capacity for coagulation hitherto deemed a distinguishing characteristic. Peptone is the most remarkable example of this kind. Whereas for- merly nothing was known of its occurrence in the urine, and subsequently it was regarded as a doubtful constituent or as a curiosity, quite recently Hofmeister and his pupils have shown that under certain, by no means rare, circumstances, it occurs in the urine in considerable quantities and that this excretion, this “ peptonuria ” is of scientific and practical importance (14). At the same time it must be remembered that only slight traces of peptone are discoverable in the blood, and that often these are absent. Compared with the current theory of the origin of all urinary albumen from the blood, this might seem very puzzling, did we not possess •other experiences which help to solve the mystery. We know that the kidneys by virtue of a peculiar attractive power excrete certain materials in large quantities, and with- draw them from the blood which contains scarcely more than mere traces (as, for example, urea, uric acid, kreatin, &c.), and in like manner Hofmeister explains peptonuria as the result of a specific peculiarity of the excretory elements of the kidneys, inasmuch as he found that after the injection of peptone into the blood, or under the skin, the urine is sui’- charged with it, while scarcely an appreciable trace is dis- coverable in the blood. This explanation appears to bo very plausible, and is doubtless accurate for certain cases which are analogous to this experimental administration of peptone, as for example, when exudations containing peptone are absorbed, as occurs in pleuritis, pneumonia, and rheumatic arthritis. It is another question as to whether this is the only way in which peptonuria can originate, or whether it may not have other sources. This question appears quite