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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    as are above given from the experiment by Dr. Ham- mond. Indeed, the effects which resulted from his experiment may be considered due to the congestion of kidney produced, as much as to the direct influence of the urea injected; for the fact is that urea, after being injected into the veins, is carried out of the body by the kidneys with such rapidity that its toxsemic properties are not elicited, unless some ob- struction be induced in the secerning organ. Im- pressed with a knowledge of these facts, I have recently instituted a different series of experiments, by injecting the urea in watery solution, not into the blood, but simply under the skin or into the perito- neal cavities of animals. The following is an epitome of the results obtained. Injected in solution into the dorsal cuticular sac of frogs weighing from 600 to 650 grains, urea is a poi- son, fatal or not according to the dose. Thirty grains of urea dissolved in a drachm of water produce pro- found coma and prostration in twenty minutes, with death within the hour. There is great collapse of the tissues, but there are no convulsions, death being too rapid for this effect. Previously to death there is no indication of ammoniacal evolution from the ani- mal, but afterwards the putrefactive changes are very rapid. When doses of fifteen grains are injected in like manner into similar animals, the symptoms do not appear within a period of half an hour after the injection, and life is prolonged nearly to the second hour. In other respects the symptoms are the same. N