640 
ON THE ACTION OF DIURETICS. 
owing to the latter? We believe that digitalis becomes a 
diuretic in consequence of its being directly anti-vital and seda- 
tive, on the same ground that we believe a cool bath or the 
feeling of fear suddenly to augment the secretion and emission of 
urine from their having first occasioned an impressive sedative 
effect. It seems to us that at the time the vegetative and plastic 
functions grow slack, as under the circumstances mentioned, while 
the action of the skin is diminished, the blood not having in its 
perepheric circulation much energy, all its serosity unemployed in 
these functions makes its escape through the uropoietic emunctory ; 
and what favours this notion is, that, in those diureses ascribable 
to the sur-sedation of the organism, the urinary discharges become 
limpid, attenuated, of little specific gravity, containing but little 
colouring matter — in a word, extremely limpid. It is also to be 
remarked, that all those physical and moral causes which restrain 
the manifestations of vital activity, and throw the economy into 
sedation, such as syncopy, fear, and certain articles of the materia 
medica, & c., considerably augment absorption ; and as such ab- 
sorption first operates on the least animalized fluids and those that 
are attenuated, such as the serosity, we likewise find, in this cir- 
cumstance, a new condition of diuresis, and a mode of reasoning 
on ihe beneficial action of medicaments analogous to the operation 
of digitalis in the treatment of dropsies or serous effusions.” 
Prior to examining the opinions of M. Trousseau, it appears to 
us that it would be interesting to bring under view those of the 
espousers of the doctrine of Rasire, who has occupied much of his 
time in investigating the action of sedative medicines, by them 
designated counter- stimulant a. 
Dr. Giacomini distinguishes diuretics under the title of cardiaco - 
vascular hyposthenisants. According to him, they cause diuresis 
in the following manner : — The kidneys are organs eminently vas- 
cular, provided with very large arterial trunks. They are not true 
glands; they are the products of the interlacement of vessels with 
tubes analogous to filters. They separate the urine from the 
blood by an action altogether passive, by veritable filtration. 
This is demonstrated by the numerous variations constantly exhi- 
bited by the urine, whose nature ever changes with that of the 
matter introduced into the blood through the divers absorptions, a 
circumstance unobservable in any other secretion. So that the 
kidneys do nothing more than separate, purely and simply from 
the blood, such matters as are intended to be cast off, and they ful- 
fil this office the better the slower the blood circulates. And, so, 
every thing that has a tendency to increase the circulation, as vio- 
lent movements, heat of atmosphere, alcoholic drinks, inflamma- 
tion of the kidneys, fever, &c. lessens the quantity of the matters 
