On glycosuria and the renal signs of perverted nutrition : with the treatment of diabetes and of some conditions allied to glycosuria / by Willaim Squire.

  • William Stevens Squire
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On glycosuria and the renal signs of perverted nutrition : with the treatment of diabetes and of some conditions allied to glycosuria / by Willaim Squire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    diabetic, attention has first been directed by some curious and perhaps bilateral neuralgias to the possible existence of glycosuria ; in others anaesthesia, as of the soles of the feet or loss of tactile sensibility, has been noticed, with loss of knee-jerk in some of them. In only one of my cases have ataxic symptoms appeared, and those six years after the occurrence of glycosuria; yet old sufferers from ataxic pains have rarely afforded an instance of this coincidence, which, however, has been known to occur. On the other hand, it is impossible to look back over a large series of diabetic patients without noticing how often nervous shock, mental trouble, or anxiety and fatigue, or over-exertion, have been concerned in determining this condition, and, excepting some cases of constitutional failure or of inherited tendency to this state, without conjecturing how many might have escaped the worst consequences of diabetes could rest and care have been adopted on the first appearance of glycosuria ! The number of cases of glycosuria here under review, though of themselves insufficient to warrant any very general conclusions, are not without value; they show the degree of frequency with which this class of case occurs in proportion to the incidence of other ailments, and they admit of comparison with the deductions commonly received as to diabetes. They correspond very closely to the latter disorder as to the age at which both are most frequently met with, and agree with many of the chief features of the more serious disease. But they are at variance with other characters ascribed to diabetes, and especially with the often recurring statement that “ men are more liable than women to this affection ; ” they, however, agree with, if they do not surpass, Bouchardat’s estimate that glycosuria occurs once in every twenty invalids among middle aged persons of the well-to-do classes. Quite recently Dr. Lecorchd has asserted the very great frequence of diabetes in women ; this is in accordance with my results ; together they shew that no peculiarity of race is concerned in such liability In this series of two hundred cases of all kinds of ailments, exclusive of dispensary patients and children, who have come under my special examination, it is rather by accident than by design that the numbers of each sex should have been nearly equal. It also happens that about half of each sex are under forty years of age ; and, that the numbers of those who have consulted me at my house and of those who have been visited by me at their own houses are nearly equal; a further division as to the ages of these two classes shews that rather more of those coming to my consulting room are among the younger
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