Treatment of Nephritis and Edema With Calcium

The action of calcium salts in the organism has been widely discussed, a debatable point being whether or not diuresis occurs after their ingestion. In 1911, Meyer and Cohn¹found that a certain amount of calcium chlorid added to the food of infants caused a decrease in weight, due to loss of water. They stressed the importance of using a comparatively large amount of calcium chlorid if loss of water was to be produced. On the basis of these observations, Schultz,²in 1918, gave doses of 10 gm. of calcium chlorid daily to patients suffering from war nephritis, and in several cases prompt diuresis and disappearance of edema occurred. In 1922, Blum³reported like results in similar cases, but he found also that with the disappearance of the edema there was a large output of sodium in the urine. As it is known that sodium salts cause