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.

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    a young man affected with anasarca, to whom he gave cream of tartar, and increased by this means the flow of urine, says, “ nam duabus libris ejus urinse ad ignem admotis cum penc dimidium evaporasset, reliquum facessit alb am in massam, jam coacto ovi albumine persimilem.”* Again, in the year 1770, we find Dr Fordyce stating, that, “ if the kidneys are relaxed or stimulated, chyle, serum, coagulable lymph, and even the red part of the blood may be thrown out.” -j- Dr Darwin, in 1794, states, “ there is a third species of diabetes, in which the urine is mucilaginous, and appears ropy when pouring it from one vessel into another, and will sometimes coagulate over the fire.”]; In 1798, Rollo thus writes, “ nitrous acid added to healthy urine produces slight effer- vescence, and gives it more or less of a reddish colour, but pro- duces no precipitation. In some diseases, however, particularly general dropsy, or anasarca, this reagent, when dropped into the urine, produces a milkiness, and in some instances, a coagulation similar to what would take place if added to the serum of the blood and again, “ in morbid states of the urine, the coagula- ble part of the serum is detected both by the nitrous acid and even by lieat.”§ In 1811, Blackall, || Cruickshanks, if and Nysten detected the same phenomenon. The latter says that he examin- ed the urine of a young man labouring under acute peritonitis, under which he died ; and among the other substances discovered, he states that it contained “ a large amount of albuminous matter, which the urine does not contain in a state of health.” Talking of the urine belonging to dropsical patients, he states that he pro- cured some from a young man, 18 years of age, who had been af- fected with ascites for several months, to all appearance idiopathic ; and among the other substances detected by chemical analysis, he adds, “ as regards the great quantity of albumen found in this urine, it will be necessary to increase analyses, and support them by the examination of dead bodies, in order to determine if the dropsy had any share in its development, or if it was dependent upon a particu- lar state of the urinary organs.” He also, alluding to peritonitic urine, says, that “ it contained much albumen, which leads to the supposition that the urine becomes albuminous in peritonitis.”** In 1812, Dr Wells *f-f* likewise directed attention to the appear- ance of albumen in the urinary secretion. * Cotunnius tie Isehiade Nervosa, Neapoli, 17G4, republished in Thesaur. Sandi- fort, p. 417. + Fordyce’s Elements of Practice of Physic, 1770, p. 18. J Darwin’s Zoonomia, 1784, Vol. i. p. 316. § Rollo on Diabetes, 1798, pp. 443-446. || Blackall on Dropsies, 1811. Ibidem, (see Appendix.) ** Nysten, Recherches de Physiologie, 1811, p. 255, 260, and 262. ft Transact, of a Society for the improvement of Med. and Chir. Knowledge, Vol. iii, p. 16'7. London, 1812. (135-712,