Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

252/440 (page 234)

Notwithstanding this suggestive description, certainly founded on excellent observation, the disease, moveable kidney, remained entirely unknown till the beginning of the present century or was regarded only as an anatomical curiosity, even by Haller (3), for instance, who, in the case of a woman who had died from dropsy and had suffered during life from a tumour above the navel, found the kidney filled with water in the lower part of the abdominal cavity. Baillie (4) mentions a tumour which he had observed four or five times, loose, in the region of the kidney of one or other side, which could be moved upwards and downwards by slight pressure with the hand, and which was pretty firm, and generally had the shape and size of a kidney. The patients concerned were very little inconvenienced and their general health little if at all disturbed. In women, as Baillie mentions, the tumour was often mistaken for an enlarged ovary; but it had not its shape and could not, moreover, be felt in the situation in which such a body can be usually felt. The author in question had no opportunity of making an autopsy, and was doubtful as to the nature of the tumour, but was inclined to regard it as a moveable kidney. The contributions on this affection by Otto (5), Meckel (6), and Portal (7), which were certainly very imperfect, remained entirely unnoticed. The first accurate post-mortem records associated with clinical descriptions were furnished in four cases by Aberle (8). He was followed by Girard (g) and King (10), who each observed one case of moveable kidney. King himself made an attempt even at that early date to remove the moveable tumour, but failed to find it after opening the abdominal cavity. The woman concerned felt herself, strange to say, better after this abortive attempt to extirpate her kidney than before.^ But a somewhat more general acquaintance with this malady dates from the publication of the excellent work on kidney diseases by Eayer (11), who himself observed several cases of moveable kidney. Then followed the publication of * A similar relief from symptoms is not unknown after otlier unsuccessful essays in abdominal surgeiy.—Tkanslatob.