On the pathology and treatment of albuminuria / by William H. Dickinson.

  • Dickinson, W. Howship (William Howship), 1832-1913.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology and treatment of albuminuria / by William H. Dickinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/476 (page 21)
    CHAPTER III. PATHOLOGY OF TUBAL AND DIFFUSE NEPHRITIS. It appears that, as regards inflammation of its secreting structure, the kidney bears an analogy with the mucous membranes, especially with such as are bestowed in a tubular form. When the bronchial membrane is inflamed, if the disease be violent enough to destroy life in a short time, we find that the membrane is injected, and that the tubes contain an excess of secretion, which is more or less altered from its natural state. If the patient die later in the disease the excess of vascularity is less evident, and but for the alteration in quantity and cha¬ racter of the fluid which the tubes contain, there is no very legible record of the morbid action which has proved fatal. In the kidney also the inflammatory change is at first Change and often altogether strictly limited to the inner surface , , of the tubes, and the product of the inflammation, as in tubes, bronchitis, only a modification of their secretion. There is always, at first at least, an excessive growth of epithe¬ lium of which the cells may be nearly natural or simply swollen, or may, as commonly happens in the later stages of the disorder, be fatty. And besides this the tubes may present even from the first, as in every form of inflamma¬ tion, the results of vascular leakage, blood or fibrine. The narrowness and contortion of the secreting tubes renders it very difficult for the epithelial growth to make its way out, when, as in this disease, it is superabundant. The consequence is that the ducts become packed to distention, and the organ is proportionally increased in size.