. Recovery usually occurs, in favorable cases, within a few
weeks, with gradually diminishing dropsy and increasing secretion of
urine, or the disease may end in a chronic disorder of the kidneys. If
acute Bright's disease is caused by, or complicated with, other
diseases, the probable result becomes much more difficult to predict.

=Treatment.=--The failure of the kidneys to perform their usual
function of eliminating waste matter from the blood makes it necessary
for the skin and bowels to do double duty. The patient should remain
in bed and be kept very warm with flannel night clothes and blankets
next the body. The diet should consist wholly of milk, a glass every
two hours, in those with whom it agrees, and in others gruels may be
substituted to some extent. The addition to milk of mineral waters,
limewater, small amounts of tea, coffee, or salt often makes it more
palatable to those otherwise disliking it. As the patient improves,
bread and butter, green and juicy vegetables, and fruits may be
permitted. An abundance of pure water is always desirable. The bowels
should be kept loose from the outset by salts given in as little water
as possible and immediately followed by a glass of pure water. A
teaspoonful may be given hourly till the bowels move. Epsom or
Glauber's salts are efficient, but the compound jalap powder is the
best purgative. Children, or those to whom these remedies are
repugnant, may take the solution of citrate of magnesia, of which the
dose is one-half to a whole bottle for adults. The skin is stimulated
by the patient's lying in a hot bath for twenty minutes each day or,
if this is not possible, by wrapping the patient in a blanket wrung
out of hot water and covered by a dry blanket, and then by a rubber or
waterproof sheet, and he is allowed to remain in it for an hour with a
cold cloth to the head. If the patient takes the hot bath he should be
immediately wrapped in warmed blankets on leaving it, and receive a
hot drink of lemonade to stimulate sweating.

For treatment of convulsions, see Vol. I, p. 188.

Vomiting is allayed by swallowing cracked ice, single doses of bismuth
subnitrate (one-quarter teaspoonful) once in three hours, and by heat
applied externally over the stomach. Recovery is hastened by avoiding
cold and damp, and persisting with a liquid diet for a considerable
period. A course of iron is usually desirable after a few weeks have
elapsed to improve the quality of the blood;