228 CAUSES OF ALBUMINOUS URINE. 
out 200 cubic feet, twenty times that amount, or 4000 cubic 
feet, will be the quantity of air vitiated in a day by a horse : 
you will have the air to the extent of 2000 cubic feet rendered 
absolutely poisonous. How can we be surprised that in stables 
which are so constructed as many are, horses and other animals 
are found with diseased lungs ? I have here said nothing of 
the action of ammonia from the dung on the lungs of animals, 
and upon their eyes. It is my belief that pulmonary com¬ 
plaints amongst horses arise in great measure from bad ventila¬ 
tion. I can easily convince you of the poisonous nature of 
carbonic acid gas, by shewing you how soon it will extinguish 
a light; and remember, that what will extinguish light will 
extinguish life. 
Mark Lane Express , 23 d Feb. 1852. 
CAUSES OF ALBUMINOUS URINE. 
M. Ed. Robin lately read a paper on the above subject 
before the Academy of Medicine of Paris: we subjoin an 
abstract of the same :—In the normal state the albumen is burnt 
in the blood, and the nitrogenized residue of this combustion, 
viz. urea and uric acid, is eliminated by the urine. The com¬ 
bustion is, however, not so complete as not to allow some little 
albumen to escape with the renal secretion ; but this albumen, 
besides being very small in amount, is somewhat different from 
the ordinary kind. M. Robin thinks that if during a sufficiently 
long time the albumen underwent in the circulation a much 
smaller amount of combustion than is habitnally the case, it 
might pass unaltered into the urine, instead of being thrown off 
in the form of urea and uric acid. The author cites the follow¬ 
ing facts in support of his opinion :— 
The urine becomes albuminous in croup, in complete ascites, 
and in cases of capillary bronchitis, with emphysema, accom¬ 
panied by much dyspnoea; in pulmonary phthisis, especially 
when complicated by pneumonia and marked with difficult 
breathing; in gestation, when sufficiently advanced to occasion 
an habitual congestion of the kidneys, owing to an impeded ab¬ 
dominal circulation ; and in such states of the system in which 
a very incomplete respiration causes a marked diminution of 
combustion. The urine is also albuminous in cyanosis, of 
whichever nature it may be ; in affections of the heart, when 
they exist in such a degree as to keep the patients in a state of 
semi-asphyxia; and, of course, in such cases where an obstacle 
