Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/124

 undergoes a singular change after a continuance of alkaline remedies. It will no longer turn litmus paper red; in other cases, litmus paper (previously reddened by immersion in healthy urine) is turned blue by that under examination. But I have observed, also, in a great number of cases, where both soda and magnesia have been given for weeks together, no effect produced on the urine. Nor is it always the case in emaciated children, that the urine has an alkaline tendency. Neither is the appearance of the urine in children very uniform, for we sometimes find it quite limpid, in others milky; occasionally it is of a pale straw colour, and now and then greenish. In the cases of infantile diabetes recorded by Dr. Venables, he informs us that the urine sometimes seems milky and dense, and that its specific gravity is much increased. It frequently coagulates by heat, or by the addition of the different re-agents. Emaciation seems, in such cases, to advance with the increase of the coagulable matter.

Though this cause of emaciation among children is rarely mentioned by pathological writers, yet there is reason to believe that many children fall victims to this inordinate secretion of urine, who have been treated for mesenteric disease or hydrocephalus; for it should seem that a tumid prominent abdomen, as well as a comatose state, are the frequent accompaniments of the more fatal form of this disease. Cases occur, where the brain, lungs, heart, liver, and other digestive organs, are implicated in the affection; yet this (according to Dr. Venables) is rather an adventitious occurrence, than essential to the disease, the substance of the kidneys being the primary seat of the