On the diseases of the kidney : their pathology, diagnosis, and treatment; with an introductory chapter on the anatomy and physiology of the kidney / by George Johnson.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the diseases of the kidney : their pathology, diagnosis, and treatment; with an introductory chapter on the anatomy and physiology of the kidney / by George Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    chapter, an elFort is made to eliminate the noxious matters by the secreting cells of the kidney. The cells, in striving to separate the strange materials, become modified in their action and nutrition, and being rapidly thrown off into the tubes, are thence removed by the current of liquid, and appear in an entire form in the urine. Meanwhile the process of secretion is checked, and this, probably, in two ways. 1st. It is likely that when the cells are engaged in separating any new material, which so far modifies them as to lead to the process of desquamation, they perform their functions less rapidly and completely than under ordinary circumstances, and, consequently, that the act of secretion receives a check from the moment that any material reaches the cells which requires this modified action — a retardation of the function of secretion which may be illustrated by the check given to the electric current, when, in one of the cells of a battery, materials having less affinity for each other are substituted for more active and efficient elements.* 2nd. When the desquamative process has resulted, as it soon does, in the engorgement of many of the tubes with their accumulated contents, it is evident that in these tubes the process of cell-growth and of secretion must be greatly retarded, if not entirely arrested. The next point to be observed is, that, together with impeded secretion, there is, as a necessary con- * This, be it understood, is offered merely as an illustration, and not in the belief that the kidney is a galvanic battery, or the process of secretion an electrolytic one.