The old clinical classification of subacute or chronic diffuse nephritis (chronic parenchymatous nephritis) with edema, and its pathologic counterpart, the large white kidney, has been superseded by the present day concepts of chronic nephrosis and the nephrotic phase of glomerulonephritis, developed from the work of F. Müller, Munk, Volhard and Fahr, A. A. Epstein and others. The clinical picture of pure or uncomplicated nephrosis has been repeatedly defined in recent years (principally in the German and American literatures) as one of profuse albuminuria, edema, oliguria, insidious onset, normal concentrating power of the kidney, prolonged course with tendency to cyclic remissions and low basal metabolic rate (occasional), with absence of cardiovascular changes, such as hypertension, retinitis, hematuria or uremia. Furthermore, it is widely maintained that chronic nephrosis manifested by degenerative changes in the kidney tubules, without demonstrable glomerular lesions, in adults at least, is an uncommon condition; that, much more frequently,