Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

1859.] Gases of Suppression of the Urine. 775ease itself is a very rare one. Dr. Abercrombie treats of suppressionof urine as resulting sometimes from disease of the kidneyitself; sometimes from disease, generally inflammatory, ofsome adjacent organ ; and only very occasionally as proceedingfrom some unknown cause affecting the nerves of the organ, andleaving few or no morbid traces after death. The same view,substantially, is taken by recent systematic writers; with astrong inclination, perhaps,, to refer all, or almost all, cases ofsuppression to some stage or modification of granular disease ofthe kidney. I cannot pretend to throw any light on the intimatenature of the disease ;nor have I the means of going intothe literature of it. But, perhaps the two following cases, whichoccurred to me very recently, may possess sufficient interest todeserve being recorded in the Edinburgh Medical Journal:—On the 13th February last, I was requested to visit a shepherdlad,appeared to be laboring under the symptoms of ordinary continuedfever, which his friends imagined had been brought onby cold and exposure to wet. He had been ill about ten days.His pulse was about 100 ; his tongue loaded, and his throatslightly inflamed and painful; he complained of headache, buthad little delirium ; there was a good deal of restlessness, andhis urine was scanty and high-colored ;there was no cutaneouseruption. He was ordered some mild aperient, his diet carefullyregulated, and, as his pulse was weak, a small quantity ofwine was directed to be taken at intervals. On the 15th, thesymptoms were nearly the same, but the quantity of urine wasaged 16, residing about seven miles from Wooler, whovery much diminished ; on the 16th, totally suppressed ; andabout midnight of the 17th, he died, just a few minutes beforeI entered the house. Before his death there was partial stupor,but no profound coma, and slight irregular movements of themuscles of the face and eyes, but no general convulsions.Five weeks afterward, I was sent for to see a younger brother,who was reported to be ill of the same disease of which the firstbrother had died. I learnt that, in the interval between thedeath of the elder brother and the seizure of the one I was nowvisiting, a sister had been ill, as the people supposed, of thesame disease, but had passed through it so mildly that no medicaladvice had been sought for her. My present patient exhibitedsimilar symptoms to those presented by his brother; hehad been ill seven days; there was headache, slight sore throat,great general uneasiness, and already the same noticeable diminutionin the quantity of water voided was beginning to manifestitself; there was also some spots on the abdomen resemblingthe eruption of typhoid fever ; but as the youth was liable toan anomalous rash in the spring months, I would not lay muchstress on that symptom. The following day the pulse had fill-