VARYING and contradictory prescriptions for consumption of food and fluid have been offered for treatment of patients in the initial stage of glomerular nephritis.1Basing his rationale on a particular concept of the pathogenesis of the disease, Volhard1aproposed that patients abstain from food and fluid for several days at the beginning of the disease. Such therapy has been widely used, and with apparent success. It has been used with the knowledge that it would not be the procedure to be recommended if a lessening of nitrogen retention were the sole consideration of treatment. The experiments described in this paper were performed in the hope that, even though indirectly and by analogy, some indication might be obtained as to the probable effect of this treatment on the retention of nitrogen which always supervenes in some degree during the onset of glomerular nephritis. There is nothing in these results