Clinical essays / by Benjamin Richardson.

  • Richardson, Benjamin Ward, 1828-1896.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical essays / by Benjamin Richardson. 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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    shall be vomiting as an early symptom, in the next no indication of such an effect. These distinctions, all of import, are nevertheless secondary ; since, in every case, they are included in two common symp- toms—excretion of albuminous urine, and coma. Differential Diagnosis, Ursemia simulates in some particulars so many of the diseases in which coma is the leading symptom, that an attempt to enter into the distinctions that mark it off from every analogous disorder would be interminable. In some instances, too, the task would be an exceedingly difficult one, unless considerations relating to the previous exist- ence of albuminuria were admitted into the argu- ment. Thus, for example, the diagnosis between ursemic poisoning and belladonna poisoning is so difficult, that, in a case where the history of the patient was unknown until the occurrence of coma, I for one, after having witnessed both classes of toxsemic disease, would scarcely be able to note a trustwor- thy sign on which to build a decided opinion. It is obvious, in fact, that the poisons producing the two classes of symptoms are well nigh identical in regard to their effects. Here, therefore, we must rest on the course which the symptoms take, and on such occurrences as the vomiting of suspicious matters, for a guide to diagnosis, rather than on any particular or exclusive symptom. From epilepsy, uraemia is distinguished by the tendency to diarrhoea, and, above all, by the suppres- sion of urine. . Distinctions may also be drawn at the time of the acute paroxysm; for the convulsion of