Petit in 93 cases, 49 being boys and 44 girls, found 22 cases of albumi nuria, 11 boys, 11 girls. Eleven times the weights were taken carefully and there were found, The average weight of each infant at t,erm was from 71 to 61 pounds.
Cassin does not admit this, since he has found that children born of albuminuric mothers, weigh less than others, where the condition does not exist. Ho believes in the depressing influence of albuminuria.
Robin admits that, in pregnant women, limmatosis is incomplete. This predisposes to an hydreemic state of the blood, and the relaxation of the tiserues; and facilitates and explains the passage of albumin into the urine, which impoverishes the blood and tends to increase its fluidity.
2d. Excess of Intra-Vascular Tension.—Beau and Cazeaux, relying on the analyses of Andral and Gavarret and Becquerel and Rodier, first pro pounded the theory of the existence of a serous-plethora in chlorosis and pregnancy. This plethora necessitates an increased arterial tension, which e,auses the passage of albumin into the urine.
Upheld by Mangenest, Devilliers and Regnault, Robin and Verdeil, Bouillaud, Potain, Gregory, Johnson, Simon, Braun, Anderson, Finger, Gallo, Calderini and by Mosier, Kierulf, Herman, Stokvis, who have shown that an excess of water alone in the blood can produce albuminuria, by interrupting the equilibrium existing between the plasma and the globules, and adding the albumin of the latter to the serum, this theory has been taken up lately in a masterly way by Peter, who has given it the name of serumuria.
" Even as," Peter says, "the pregnant woman, for the heematasis and the blematopcesis of the fcetus, makes the materials for both, even so she per forms the urinary functions for both.
" The pregnant woman excretes daily a greater quantity of urine. While the woman in a normal state eliminates from 330 to 360 grains, Quinquaud has shown that of urea, the pregnant woman eliminates from 450 to 600 grains, i.e., nearly one and a half to twice more than in the unimpreg nated state. If she thus makes more urine in twenty-four hours, she ought to do more excretory work, i.e., more blood should be filtered by the kidneys, the greater the functional hypercemia. But the more the
blood in the organ the greater the vascular pressure, and the greater the vascular pressure the more the filtration, not only of the serum of the blood, but even of the blood itself, a phenomenon which is improperly called albuminuria, but which is serumuria." Moreover the kidney has a functional relation with the uterus, which has been established by Buquet. This author ha8 noticed the enlarge ment of the kidneys at the catamenia, in a case of ectropion of the organs.
Finally, the renal arteries give passage to a large amount of blood, which congests the utero-ovarian arteries very much during pregnancy; hence the dilatation of the renal vessels and the increase in the hypercemia of those organs.
Blot had already pointed out, as a cause of albuminuria, the active and passive congestion of the kidneys, and a sympathetic nervous irritation of the organs, on account of the relation which exists between them and the uterus, and which produces albuminuria, just as irritation of the pneumo gastric produced it in the experiments of Claude Bernard.
Martin admits a direct relation between the kidneys and uterus. Every increased stimulation of the uterine sympathetic system will react on the renal, and produce albuminuria.
Blot, and some other authors, have added, as a cause of blood pressure, the mechanical action of the uterus, which presses on the great vessels of the abdomen, and impedes thus the return circulation.
Frerichs, Britun, Rosenstein, Wieger, Beckmann, Krassing, Brown Si.quard, Jaccoud, Rose Cormak, Barker, Correnti, Molas, Mohammed, Maricke, IIubert de Louvain, have sec. epted this last theory.
It is impossible, indeed, to deny this action of the uterus in the last months of pregnancy, but if it is true that albuminuria is most often met with in this period it is none the less true that it is sometimes very often met with, so to speak, at a period when it is impossible to refer it to the pressure of the uterus. We are forced, therefore, to look for another cause, and that of Peter seems the most rational.