During the course of the diseases called nephritis, symptoms are occasionally encountered that lead to the diagnosis of convulsive or eclamptic uremia. This term is not used in this paper because, even in severe convulsive states, patients usually show no retention of nonprotein nitrogen in the blood, and because the term leads to confusion of this condition with true uremia. The term cerebral complication, as suggested by Dr. Kenneth D. Blackfan, is preferable, because the common symptoms are distinctly cerebral (vomiting, headache, dizziness, visual disturbances, convulsions and coma), while the most constant clinical abnormality, arterial hypertension, may be considered an index of intracranial pressure.
The cases here reported comprise all of the instances of this complication, cerebral symptoms with hypertension, seen in the nephritic service at the Children's Memorial Hospital and in my private practice during the past ten years. The total number of patients with nephritis from which these