CHAPTER V.
BRIGHT’S DISEASE (ALBUMINURIA).
In its later stages, this is one of the worst forms of disease. It is often said to be caused by “cold.” There can be no doubt but what a person whose kidneys are already badly diseased, and, consequently, his whole system depraved, may have a violent illness excited by extreme exposure to wet and cold. The same may be said in case of one reduced by any exhausting form of disease; but sound-bodied men, living hygienically, could never have this disease, whatever the degree of cold they might have to endure. On the contrary, this disease is not known among the residents of the polar regions; our own explorers among the ice-fields of the north do not have it, although exposed for long periods to a temperature at 40° to 60° F. below zero, and to changes of so extreme a character that our temperate climate affords no parallel to them. “In the accounts of Arctic expeditions, though the most intense cold was often endured, under circumstances of great fatigue, by men previously weakened by disease and hardship, this is not among the diseases from which they suffered. Dr. Kane’s men, though enduring extreme cold, exposed
on one occasion for seventy-two hours at a mean temperature of 41° below zero, suffered fearfully from frost-bite and scurvy, but not from any renal affection. Other travelers within the Arctic circle bear the same testimony, and I have been informed by those familiar with the cold districts of North America, that there renal dropsy is unknown.”[41] “The travelers in the frigid zone are exposed to far greater and more sudden transitions of temperature than are ever felt in our changeable but temperate climate. Capt. Parry states that his men often underwent a sudden change of 120°, in passing from the cabin of the vessel to the outer air, and yet none but the most trifling complaints resulted. Here we have all the circumstances from which experience would lead us to anticipate renal disease, viz.: great preceding depression, intense and protracted cold suddenly applied.... Extreme cold,” continues Dr. Dickinson (ibid.) “though it may stop cutaneous exhalation, probably does not allow the material that would cause renal inflammation to accumulate. Cold increases the action of oxygen and gives rise to increased combustion of the solids and fluids of the body. This condition, as I have emphasized elsewhere repeatedly, occasions a demand for a large amount of food daily, to supply the waste, and exalts the digestive powers correspondingly. The moral of all this, for those who, living in a temperate climate, would avoid these disorders—all physical disorders,
indeed—is that here the above conditions can not obtain to the extent of rendering possible the digestion and absorption of three full meals a day. Only under exceptional circumstances are two such meals ever thoroughly digested and assimilated—they can never be, unless needed; and this fact is not disproved simply because inexperts do not recognize the symptoms of indigestion which everywhere prevail among themselves. Some of the most incorrigible workers, with both brain and muscle, known to me, take but one meal a day,[42] and this because they found the change necessary in order to enable them to perform their arduous labors and preserve their health. Others similarly situated divide this meal into two halves—taking a small meal morning and night, or, better than the latter, a lunch in the morning, and at night, after ample rest, the principal meal. No person ever tried this plan and found any need of a change because of lack of nourishment.[43] I mention this last point to meet the stock objection of people who essay to escape from the logic of the position—the necessity for the modification of their own dietetic habits—behind the old dogma, ‘one’s meat is another’s poison.’ (See p. [43].) It is entirely probable that a robust man (a frail one would succumb to the exposure, with or without food) exposed for days together, and for the entire twenty-four
hours, to the extreme cold of winter, exercising vigorously meantime, could eat three full meals a day and escape digestive disorder. The habit of approximating as nearly as possible to this diet, in a temperate climate, or while the bodily warmth is maintained by artificial heat, originates the greater proportion of our ailments; while lack of exercise, and the folly of attempting to oxygenate this excessive quantity of food with air that is breathed over and over again—a process which one writer likens to eating one’s own fœces—amply accounts for the balance.
[41] “Treatise on Albuminuria,” by W. Howship Dickinson, M.D., F.R.C.P., etc., p. 54.
[42] See note on The One-Meal System.
[43] The fact is—and it can not be made too prominent—ninety-nine in the hundred, of all classes of people, eat in excess of their needs, and the “small eater,” eating without appetite, eats, relatively speaking, more excessively than the gross-feeder whose appetite never fails.
“By cold the respiratory function is exalted, and the excretion of urea is diminished. With the intense cold of the North Pole (and in the open air), the introduction of oxygen by the lungs is probably so great, and the oxidation in the body so active, that all material susceptible of such action becomes oxidized, as much of it as can be converted into carbonic acid passing out with the breath. The kidneys, therefore, are not liable, as in temperate climates, to be irritated by excrementitious matter, for the stress of excretion falls upon the lungs.” (Ibid.) The practical question then is, What can we do, in this particular climate, that shall tend to give us exemption from a disease that can not exist at the poles, where the cold is intense enough to require a man to eat all he can, nor at the tropics, when the heat is met with a diet of juicy fruits?[44] (See article on
Fruits.) Simply this, and nothing more; so regulate the diet as to forbid indigestion, or, in other words, eat according to our needs, as governed by work and weather; and all that has been said about the cause and prevention of “colds” (see C.) is applicable right here.