On some diseases in which albuminous urine occurs / by Thomas Williamson.

Date:
[1841]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some diseases in which albuminous urine occurs / by Thomas Williamson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    1/16 (page 1)
    ON SOME DISEASES IN WHICH ALBUMINOUS URINE OCCURS. BY THOMAS WILLIAMSON, M. D. One of the Physicians to the Leith Dispensary, &c. &c. (From the Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, No. 149.) Since the promulgation of the views entertained by Dr Bright and others, in reference to the urine containing albumen in cer- tain diseased conditions of the kidney, members of the profession in general, have willingly given their assent to this doctrine. But whilst, on the one hand, it cannot be denied that Dr Bright, by his researches, threw light upon much that was formerly ob- scure, on the other, it may fairly be questioned whether the me- dical profession are not disposed to attach too much importance to the simple appearance of an adventitious principle in the re- nal secretion, as pathognomonic of structural change in the kid- ney. It is my object, then, in the present communication, to in- quire whether there are diseases, apart from change in the renal structure, in connection with which albumen is contained in the urine, and by this Means attempt to show that this phenomenon is not of such rare occurrence as is perhaps generally believed. Although Dr Bright, doubtless, is entitled to the merit of being the first to proclaim to the medical world, the fact of renal dis- ease, co-existing with an altered constitution of the urine and dropsy, as mere symptoms of the primary renal change of struc- ture, yet the existence of albumen in the urine of certain pa- tients labouring under dropsy was made known in the year 1764- by Cotunmus, who, adverting to this phenomenon, as occurring in