Observations on the anatomy and physiology of the kidney / by Robert M'Donnell.

  • Robert McDonnell
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the anatomy and physiology of the kidney / by Robert M'Donnell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    lution, thrown into the mesenteric vein, pass through the “ anastomosing channels” directly into the cava, and being thus conveyed to the kidney, be excreted, just as that thrown into the jugular vein ? The important physiological discoveries which Claude Bernard has already made, give great weight to any assertion of his, and on this subject I am induced to differ from him, from the conviction that he has formed his con- clusions too hastily, and has, perhaps rather rashly, given the sanction of his name to a theory, which, had it emanated from a less high authority, would have hardly deserved to be so fully analyzed. Robinson’s^ experiments illustrating the effects of venous obstruction on the kidney and its secretion,” which have the advantage of having been repeated and confirmed by Frerichst prove that not only does bloody or albu- minous urine in all cases follow such obstruction, but, as a consequence of it, the kidney enlarges rapidly to a great size. Thus, in a greater number of the cases in which he applied a ligature to the renal vein in rabbits, bloody or albuminous urine immediately resulted ; and on killing the animals in from ten minutes to half an hour, the kidney of the side operated on was found to weigh twice as much as the sound one. With these observations those of Frerichs closely agree. In the section of his work de- voted to “ experimental proofs of the origin of Bright’s disease from venous congestion,” he states that, in an old rabbit in which the left renal vein was tied, after twelve hours the urine was found bloody and highly albuminous, the left kidney was more than double the weight of the right, and the urinary tubules were filled with blood. An increased supply of arterial blood does not, according to these physiologists, give rise to these consequences in so marked a degree as venous congestion. After applying a ligature to the aorta, immediately below the origin of the * Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, second series, vol. viii. p. 56. t Die Bright, sche Nierenkrankheit, p. 276.
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