Till: MODERN HOUSE DOCTOR. 117 



origo mali ; where the great abundance of sugar in the blood 

 seems to be an obstacle to the combustion of albumen ; and 

 where, finally, the natural heat is lowered by one or two degrees 

 with patients who are severely affected. The urine is albumi- 

 nous in that kind of nervous exhaustion which characterizes the 

 state of frame called lumbago, which exhaustion must be con- 

 nected with a great diminution of calorification and slow com- 

 bustion. The urine is likewise albuminous in consequence of 

 severe exposure to cold of a large surface of the body. Finally, 

 Bright's disease, where the urine is always albuminous and 

 ancemic, is especially attributed to many of the causes which 

 have been above enumerated as capable of exciting the passage 

 of albumen into the urine. 



" The author continues by stating that some useful data may 

 be obtained from comparative physiology. As a general rule, 

 the urine of the common mammalia and of birds contains no al- 

 bumen. Among reptiles, on the other hand, the batrachia, so 

 remarkable for the low temperature of their animal heat, yield 

 urine in which albumen is always to be found. It now remains 

 to be proved, says M. Robin, that the urine becomes albumi- 

 nous under the influence of such agents as interfere in a marked 

 degree with slow combustion. The author then adduces the 

 folowing conclusions : — 



" When the activity of the combustion which takes place in 

 the blood is too feeble to burn the whole of the albumen which, 

 in the normal state, should be consumed in a given time, the gen- 

 eral vitality is diminished, and thus more or less albumen is al- 

 lowed to pass unaltered into the urine, viz., just so much organic 

 matter as escapes the transformation into urea or uric acid. 

 The proportion of urea contained in albuminous urine should, 

 therefore, be smaller than it is found in normal urine, and such 

 is found to be the case in the following diseases, the only ones, 

 according to the author, in which experiments have been made, 

 viz., pulmonary phthisis, diseases of cerebro-spinal axis, ex- 

 tensive and acute bronchitis, with intense dyspnoea, and Bright's 

 disease." — Percivall. 



