A Treatise on Bright's Disease of the Kidneys: Its Pathology, Diagnosis, and ...

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface

I HAVE only to say of this volume that it is the result of the experience of nearly twenty-six years of hospital and extensive private practice, and of several years' study in the laboratory, of pathological and healthy kidneys of men and animals. The illustrations were all drawn by myself from kidneys, with the exception of Figures 1, 2, and 7, which are taken from other authors, and 4, 5, 6, and 12, which were drawn for me from my own preparations.

In perusing the works of many writers upon nephritis, I may in some instances unconsciously have incorporated their ideas without according due credit. I have endeavored, however, carefully to fulfil all obligations of this kind.

As I have shown in the context, the term Bright' s disease, as und-^rstood by Bright himself, does not comprise every condition of nephritis, but as most of the conditions I have described are generally understood as belonging to Bright's disease, I have given my work tills title, though the nomenclature is by no means exact. I have usually employed instead, throughout the book, the word nephiitis.

I have used exclusively the word albumin instead of

VI PBEFAOE.

albumen, although the termination en is generally used by medical writers. The word albumen, is, however, simply the Latin word meaning the "white of the egg," though it is applied to every variety of albumin ; the latter, however, represents the proximate principle, and I believe chemists now generally distinguish the two by the terminations en and in. In Watts' "Dictionary of Chemistry," * the most important work of the kind in English, the termination m, is exclusively used.

Where, however, I have quoted from other authors, I have not felt justified in changing their spelling.

My work has been, at least, conscientiously performed, and with an earnest desire of adding to the knowledge and therapeutics of the subject of which it treats.

H. B. MILLARD.

* Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1870.