The clinical significance of glycosuria in pregnant women / by J. Whitridge Williams.

  • Williams, J. Whitridge (John Whitridge), 1866-1931.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The clinical significance of glycosuria in pregnant women / by J. Whitridge Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Extracted from the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1909 CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF GLYCOSURIA IN PREGNANT WOMEN. By J. Whitridge Williams, M.D., PROFESSOR _OP OBSTETRICS IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE. I KNOW of no complication of pregnancy the significance of which is more variously interpreted than the presence of sugar in the urine of pregnant women. Certain writers regard it as a harmless almost physiological phenomenon, while others hold that it is always indica- tive of the existence of diabetes. Thus, Charrin, Brocard, Leduc, Salami, and Bar state that a larger or smaller quantity of glucose can be demonstrated in the urine of from 40 to 66 per cent, of all pregnant women, and is, therefore, of no clinical significance. On the other hand Eshner, in 1907, collected the histories of 35 cases of diabetes complicating pregnancy, with a gross maternal mortality of 54 per cent. Moreover, it sometimes happens that the same case may be interpreted as a harmless and transient glycosuria, or as a mild case of diabetes, according to the point of view of the writer. This divergence of opinion is in great part due to the influence exerted upon medical thought by a paper upon puerperal diabetes, which J. Matthews Duncan read before the London Obstetrical Society in 1882. At that time he collected from his own experience and the literature the histories of 22 pregnancies occurring in 16 women who had become pregnant while suffering from diabetes, or who had developed the disease during the course of pregnancy. Four died in coma or collapse within a few days after delivery and 7 others perished from diabetes or tuberculosis within the following two years, while 47 per cent, of the children were lost. He therefore concluded that diabetes constituted one of the most serious compli-