280 THE SECRETIONS: 



was by no means rare. Becquerel only observed blood in the 

 urine in the single case of a child five and half years old, who 

 was attacked with anasarca. In a girl whose nervous system 

 was very much deranged during the period of the febrile in- 

 vasion, the urine was very deeply coloured, turbid, and deposited 

 on the sides of the vessel a copious precipitate of a bright red 

 colour. The sediment disappeared when the eruption was fully 

 established. Blood was frequently observed in the urine when 

 there were symptoms of impending dissolution during the ner- 

 vous form of scarlatina; the quantity was sometimes very consi- 

 derable, and the corpuscles could be readily detected by the 

 microscope. The appearance of blood in this state must be 

 distinguished from that in which it arises from a renal affection 

 (Bright* s disease) in which Becquerel has frequently observed it, 

 and where, in the fatal cases, the existence of Bright' s disease 

 was proved. The amount of albumen in the urine is, in these 

 cases, constant and larger than is frequently found in inflam- 

 matory diseases, without the occurrence of any simultaneous 

 dropsical symptoms. 1 During the period of desquamation symp- 

 toms of dropsy frequently supervene, and the urine often contains 

 albumen, in larger amount and more continuously than is usually 

 the case in inflammations. 



The observations regarding the presence of albumen during 

 the period of desquamation after scarlatina are so contradictory 

 that it has become a matter of very great interest to settle these 

 conflicting statements by further researches. We have dropsical 

 symptoms with albuminuria, dropsical symptoms without albu- 

 minuria, and albuminuria without dropsical symptoms. Solon 

 found albumen in the urine in twenty-two out of twenty-three 

 cases of scarlatina. On the other hand, Philipp 2 observed, in 

 Berlin where scarlatina was recently very prevalent, and ana- 

 sarca could not be warded off, at least sixty cases in which the 

 urine was tested both with heat and nitric acid, and no trace of 

 albumen could be detected. 



In two cases of scarlatina that were being treated in Romberg's 



1 When the urine contains no blood-corpuscles visible by the microscope, dissolved 

 haeraatoglobulin may be present, which can be estimated in the manner described in 

 p. 187. 



? Casper's Wochenschrift, 1840 ; No. 35. 



