Subacute and Chronic Nephritis as Found in One Thousand Unselected Necropsies

Ever since Bright, by his admirable papers in 1827¹and 1836,²established the interrelation between renal disease, albuminuria, certain types of dropsy and cardiac hypertrophy, the question of a proper classification of the cases which belong to what is commonly known as Bright's disease has been discussed with much interest, and at times with considerable animation, among clinicians and pathologists. Bright himself early in the course of his very precise clinical and anatomical investigations, during which he had also noticed in such cases a tendency to inflammations of the serous membranes and to cerebral apoplexy, was struck with the great differences in the gross appearance of the kidneys, and he seems to have favored the view that a subdivision into different groups seemed desirable but he never, according to his published writings, came to any very definite conclusion in regard to this point, although we have