A practical treatise on Bright's diseases of the kidneys / by T. Grainger Stewart.

  • Stewart, Thomas Grainger, 1837-1900.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on Bright's diseases of the kidneys / by T. Grainger Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    much smaller than might have heen wished ; but they have all been examined and recorded by myself, and are capable of affording at least a contribution towards a more accurate knowledge of the subject. I have given the results in per-centages—the only form in which we can conveniently grasp their meaning; and for purposes of comparison I have reduced some tables by other autho- rities to the same standard. The fractions have been ex- pressed only when they amount to one-fourth, one-half, or three-fourths of unity, for this I consider sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes. The number and importance of the complications of Bright's Disease have been long recognised. Dr Christi- son, in his excellent work on this subject, published nearly thirty years ago, says— The primary disease seldom con- tinues long without other important diseases being super- added to it, and giving occasion to a great variety of ad- ditional symptoms; and he enumerates among them as secondary affections of most frequent occurrence: — dropsy, diarrhoea, pleurisy, peritonitis, pneumonia, catarrh, dyspepsia and chronic vomiting, coma with other affections of the head, chronic rheumatism, chronic diseases of the heart, and organic diseases of the liver.1 Frerichs, writing in 1851, enumerates affections of the circulation, particularly cardiac hypertrophy; of the lungs and air-passages, particularly oedema, pneumonia, vascular emphysema, and tubercle ; of the liver, fatty degeneration and cirrhosis ; of the spleen, hypertrophy ; of the stomach and intestines, chronic catarrh and occasionally ulceration; of the centra] organs of the nervous system, apoplexy and serous effusions; of the serous membranes, dropsies and inflammations; and, lastly, occasional affections of the bones and skin.2 He carefully analysed 292 cases re- corded by Bright, Christison, Gregory, Martin Solon, 1 Christison, On Granular Degeneration of the Kidneys, p. 76. 2 Frerichs, Die Brightische Nierenkrankheit rind deren Behand- lung, p. 44.