Fatal Chronic Nephritis in a Fourteen Year Old Girl With Only One Kidney and a History of Scarlet Fever

The recognition of the factors which in a given individual have led to the development of chronic nephritis, is both difficult and important. The whole problem of the etiology of chronic nephritis is inherently confused by the variety of possible contributing causes and by the long interval which usually intervenes before the symptomatic stage of the disease appears. For this reason cases which seem to present new aspects of this problem deserve to be studied carefully and recorded, even though alone they do not justify far reaching conclusions. Such a case is the basis of this report. In this instance two distinct etiologic factors are present; the renal anomaly and the occurrence of a severe attack of scarlet fever. Death resulted apparently as a direct result of one or both of these factors at a sufficiently early age to exclude the action of many of the contributing causes of chronic