ALBUMINOUS URINE. 485 



urine has recovered its healthy appearance. Why these poor 

 people should be supposed to have had diseased kidneys merely 

 because they had albuminous urine for a week, I cannot 

 imagine. It is a mere assumption, I think. I could not 

 open them, to ascertain whether their kidneys were diseased ; 

 but as they are in perfect health now, and had been in perfect 

 health just before, and the urine is no longer albuminous, 

 I do not believe there is any more foundation for supposing 

 the existence of organic disease, than there is for supposing 

 that cancer of the stomach is present in every case of tem- 

 porary dyspepsia, because, when people die of dyspepsia, we 

 find more or less organic disease. 



Hundreds of persons, in different ages, have pined away, 

 and died without their disease or cause of decay being known, 

 or with their cases falsely called liver, brain, dropsy, &c., 

 until the genius of a Bright discovered the real cause of mis- 

 chief in the disease or disorder of the kidney — the morbus 

 Brightii — which, though little striking, is sufficient to spoil 

 the secretion of the organ, and send one of the most noxious 

 excretions — the urea — which should be discharged with the 

 urine, back through the frame to poison the springs of life, 

 and thereby agitating and paralysing every function. 



It is the business of those who make these assertions to 

 prove their correctness ; to prove that these persons have 

 organic disease of the kidney, and not our business to dis- 

 prove it. Because, when a person dies making albuminous 

 urine, you always find structural disease of the kidney, it 

 does not follow that, when the urine temporarily presents 

 the same phenomenon, and the person recovers, he has had 

 anything more than a functional complaint. Because the 

 affection of the kidneys may arrive at such a degree of in- 

 tensity as to destroy life, and you then always find organic 

 disease, it does not follow that the temporary formation of 

 albumen should be anytliing more than a functional dis- 

 turbance of the kidneys. I should draw just the opposite 

 conclusion ; and should suppose that, if the symptoms were 

 temporary, the disease must be functional. Dr. Mackintosh 

 informed me, that some medical students in Edinburgh had 



