This is an account of five patients seen in
:. iards 21, 23 and 24 of the Royal Infirmary,
Edinburgh; all the patients suffered from some
form of oedema. The severity of the oedema
varied greatly in the different patients, as did
the factors responsible for its appearance. This
account aims merely to recount the clinical
histories, with special emphasis on the oedema,
and to discuss the causes as revealed in each
patient.In the interests of brevity and clarity, it
has been necessary to omit some of the details of
the history and clinical findings in each patient
where they were not strictly relevant to the
problem of oedema, but any details of special
interest have also been included. Although this
is intended primarily as a clinical account, the
discussion of the pathogenesis of oedema in each
patient must, as so often in medicine today,
delve into mechanisms at a microscopic and even at
a molecular level. At this level, the discussion
runs the risk of either being too brief and
dogmatic, or else too detailed and inconclusive;
and at any level the discussion must inevitably be
incomplete. Many of the theories of the
pathogenesis of oedema are speculative and
controversial, and the more complete the reading
of the literature, the more confusing the
picture becomes. The author has attempted, in
this account, to discuss some of the more
important factors in the production of oedema,
but has tried to avoid confusing himself and the
reader with too much detail.Oedema, which may be defined as a localised or
generalised increase in the volume of the interstitial fluid, can arise in many diseases, and
be the result of the interplay of a number of
factors. These factors are not well understood - but the first patient suffered from oedema of a type where the simpler explanations would seem to
suffice
