On temporary albuminuria : more particularly as occurring in the course of certain febrile or other acute diseases / [J. Warburton Begbie].

  • Begbie, James Warburton, 1826-1876.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On temporary albuminuria : more particularly as occurring in the course of certain febrile or other acute diseases / [J. Warburton Begbie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rs generally find severe diarrhoea as a symptom during life, and deposit in the intestinal glands as the most prominent lesion after death. In several cases of this kind, which proved fatal, I have found albumen in the urine for days before death; and in others, which happily recovered, I have as frequently noticed its occurrence. In both these instances the albumen appeared, for the most part, at an advanced period of the disease, at least after the particular symptoms had continued for some time; while in the former the albuminuria continued up to death; in the latter, in some it disappeared as convalescence was fairly established; and in others it lasted for a longer period. The amount of albumen in these cases, and the other characters with which the coagulability was associated, were exactly as I have described them in the example of pneumonia; and finding the albuminuria to bear a relation to the deposits in internal organs in typhus, I have been led to regard the kidneys as the emunctories by which the morbid matter so deposited is to a certain extent at least removed from the system—and so doing, to regard the temporary albuminuria of typhus as a critical albuminuria. It is, I think, no objection to this view that deposits, such as those referred to, remain in organs for a lengthened period; for, firstly, I do not think we can pretend to limit the period of their removal or disappearance; and I am inclined to believe that, when they do so disappear, the urine will very probably contain the ingredients I have noticed; and, secondly, the calcareous masses found in the spleen, and other organs, accepted as the earthy remains of the deposits spoken of, certainty attest the removal by some channel or other of the animal matter, of which, in their original condition, these deposits were partly composed. This is an interesting subject, and invites further inquiry. And now, in conclusion, I have thus brought under the atten- tion of the Society some of the various causes, as I have observed them, of temporary albuminuria, more particularly as occurring in the course of certain febrile or other acute diseases. Let me again state that I am far from supposing that in this consideration I have included all its various causes, or the dis- eases in whieh it may oeeur. There exist several others, as puerperal fever, phthisis, &c.; these, however, I have not hitherto been able to observe in numbers sufficient to justify