A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 4 : $b Diseases of the genito-urinary and cutaneous systems. Medical ophthalmology, and otology
Science
A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 4 : $b Diseases of the genito-urinary and cutaneous systems. Medical ophthalmology, and otology
Medicine -- Practice
A woman, twenty-six years old, came into the hospital on January 25,
1876. She had contracted syphilis five years before. For two years she
had suffered from dyspnoea and frontal headache. For seven months there
was occasional oedema of the face and feet. At the time of her
admission to the hospital she was very pale and anæmic; the urine was
of a specific gravity of 1008, abundant, and contained no albumen or
casts. The liver was very large and smooth. It was supposed that she
had waxy liver and kidneys. She grew steadily weaker, continued to have
a little oedema, vomited occasionally, developed the physical signs of
bronchitis, with a temperature of 104° Fahr., and died on April 3,
1876. At the autopsy the aortic valves were found thin and
insufficient. There was muco-pus in both the large and small bronchi,
with irregular spots of red hepatization in the lung. The liver and
spleen were large and waxy. The kidneys weighed together four ounces,
and presented the ordinary lesions of atrophied kidneys, with only
commencing waxy infiltrations of a few of the Malpighian tufts.
The Large White Kidney of Heart Disease.--This variety of chronic
diffuse nephritis seems to be secondary to organic disease of the
heart, and, less frequently, to emphysema of the lungs. The urine is
diminished in amount, sometimes suppressed; it is dark-colored, the
specific gravity varies between 1010 and 1030; albumen is absent
altogether or present in small amount; hyaline and granular casts may
be present, but are not constant. Dropsy may be absent or moderate or
excessive. Cerebral symptoms--vomiting, cough, dyspnoea, anæmia--are
usually present. Some of the patients die suddenly, some with dropsy,
some with urgent dyspnoea.
The examples of chronic diffuse nephritis which are neither atrophied
kidneys nor large white kidneys are numerous. Some of them give the
clinical history of the large white kidneys, some that of the atrophied
kidneys, some do not correspond to that of either; but they all exhibit
some of the characteristic symptoms of chronic nephritis--changes in
the urine, dyspnoea, vomiting, cerebral symptoms, dropsy, anæmia.
The following histories will show the course of the disease in some of
these cases:
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