ALBUMINOSE. 87 



Albumen may appear in the urine in a variety of pathological 

 states, though formerly supposed to be pathognomonic of Bright's 

 disease of the kidney. It may occ"ur in acute as well as chronic 

 affections of the kidney. It also not seldom appears for a short 

 time in many acute and chronic diseases not connected with renal 

 affections, as "inflammations of the thoracic organs, acute articular 

 rheumatism, intermittent fevers, typhus, measles, cholera, insuffi- 

 ciency of the valves or contractions of the orifices of the heart; also 

 chronic affections of the liver, and pulmonary and peritoneal tuber- 

 culosis, especially towards their fatal termination." 1 It also occurs 

 in severe catarrh of the bladder, and in the renal catarrh supervening 

 in erysipelas and scarlatina, 2 together with the fibrinous casts of the 

 uriniferous tubes, such as appear in acute nephritis. 



Albumen exists in the feces in diarrhoea depending on intestinal 

 catarrh, and in cholera and dysentery. 3 As the blood becomes 

 changed, its amount increases ; and hence this symptom occurs in 

 Bright's disease also, and large patches of epithelium may be dis- 

 charged per rectum. 



Albumen is an element of pus, constituting from 6.85 to 8.36 

 per cent. It also exists in all exudations, inflammatory or otherwise, 

 and in all transudations (effusions), whether dropsical or not ; but in 

 the latter there is often less albumen, and always more salts and ex- 

 tractive matters, than in the serum of the blood. 



2. Albuminose. 



Albuminose has till recently been confounded with albumen and 

 caseine. MM. Gruillot and Leblanc mistook it for the latter. It is 

 liquid, is not coagulable by heat, and incompletely so by acids. 



Albuminose is found in the blood, constituting 4 to 6 parts in 

 1,000 ; and in the chyle resulting from the digestion of the nitro- 

 genized (organic) substances, especially albumen, fibrine, caseine, 

 and musculine. It is formed in the duodenum and jejunum, from 

 the principles just mentioned in the food, and perhaps by mere 

 isomeric catalysis. The pancreatic fluid, however, is the immediate 

 agent of its formation thus. (Bernard]^ Unlike albumen, it is highly 

 endosmotic, and is not united with salts of mineral origin. 4 En- 

 tering the blood from the small intestine, it then mostly becomes 

 albumen, or may probably at once be converted into musculine, 



1 Lehmann, vol. i. p. 308. 2 See the chapter on "Transudations." 3 Ibid. 



4 Mialhe and Pressat mean by albuminose the " endosmotic and assimilable sub- 

 stance finally produced by the action of gastric juice on the albumen of the food." 

 (Lehmann.) - 



