The bearings of chronic disease of the heart upon pregnancy, parturition, and childbed : with papers on puerperal pluero-pneumonia and eclampsia / by Angus MacDonald.

  • Macdonald, Angus, 1836-1886.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The bearings of chronic disease of the heart upon pregnancy, parturition, and childbed : with papers on puerperal pluero-pneumonia and eclampsia / by Angus MacDonald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    284/308 (page 268)
    It may ultimately be demonstrated that some of these cases arise in the manner described above, and that others must be explained by reference to secondary anaemia produced according to the mechanical idea of Traube. OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONDITION OF THE KIDNEYS IN CASE I. When I leave the consideration of the brain changes, and proceed to remark upon the cause of the peculiar alterations found to exist in the renal epithelium, I feel unable to suggest any likely ^Etiology, except by assuming that it resulted from some special influence exerted by the pregnant condi- tion. This is the view that Bartels' is led to entertain regarding the cause of the frequent attacks of parenchy- matous nephritis, which he believes is the form of the renal disease specially associated with pregnancy. All attempts to explain the very frequent occurrence of renal disease in connection with pregnancy on purely mechanical grounds, such as local pressure upon the renal veins, must be allowed to have proved in a great measure failures. We, however, see a great disposition to degenerative changes in the epi- thelial cells of the liver in connection with pregnancy, and yet we are unable, with any degree of certainty, to explain the aetiology of these alterations, except by referring them to some occult influence exerted by the pregnancy, whether this arises in the condition of the nervous system, the blood and blood-vessels, or in the other tissues. The view that what is usually called the parenchymatous nephritis of preg- nancy is not a nephritis at all, but a degeneration of certain renal epithelium, establishes, it appears to me, a certain ana- logy between the renal condition in eclampsia and the hepatic condition in acute yellow atrophy, and leads us to expect that they may both be ultimately found referable to a similar cause. 1 Loc. cit. p. 277.