Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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Most of the women with moveable kidney liad had several children, as is shown by the subsequent table of my observa- tions. Out of 42 cases observed by me, only 2 concerned women who had never borne children. With regard to the station in life and occupation of patients with moveable kidney, it must be remarked that most of them belong to the labouring class, as would be naturally expected to be the case with hospital in-patients and out-patients, who furnish our material for observation. This complaint is, however, by no means confined to the poorer class, as is shown by the six cases published by Henoch, which one and all concern persons of fairly good position. y. Pathological Anatomy. Little attention has hitherto been paid at post-mortem examinations to the changes produced by moveable kidney. It is true that the old classical anatomists, Bustachms, Bauliin, Morgagni, Buysch, and Bailer, quote cases of kid- neys lying low down, horse-shoe kidneys, abnormalities in the renal vessels, &c., but they do not give much more infor- mation about the conditions in acquired moveable kidney as regards pathological anatomy, than the recent textbooks and handbooks on renal diseases and special pathology. Cruvcil- hier contents himself with the statement that the kidneys not only leave their situation but also rotate on their axis. Boldtanshy is even less explicit in specially mentioning the congenital abnormalities of position. Ikl.oreover, in the monographs of Bollet, Le Ray, and Defon- taines, we look in vain for an explicit account of the condi- tions as regards pathological anatomy, so that we are driven to study isolated post-mortem records as the only means of arriving at a better understanding of the subject. How scanty these are, however, is best recognised by the fact that Durham only found two cases of displacement of the kidney in 1600 autopsies, and that of these one was congenital. In the same way Schultze found only five cases of moveable kidney in 3658 autopsies in the Charite Hospital of Berlin