A symposium on nephritis at the present time quite fittingly is opened with a reference to the results of recent work in experimental nephritis. This, however, is not the case so much because the results as yet are of very great importance, but rather because it seems likely that the experimental method applied to the study of nephritis will in the future throw touch light on the problems of the disease.
The history of the study of nephritis is not long. With Bright in 1827 begins our accurate knowledge. He it was who linked together in causal relation the symptoms, albuminuria and edema, and the lesions in the kidney. Keen observers added fact after fact for fifty years and more. Technical improvements widened the field of observation, so that a period, which we may arbitrarily end in the early part of the present decade, had contributed much to our knowledge