Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

294/440 (page 276)

instance, of the movements of the spinal column, which, as we have already seen, is to bo regarded as immoveable only in the region occupied by the kidney in its normal position. Besides, a well-fitting pair of stays, which is only used for supporting the breasts and strings of the garments, is, as we shall see, much more calculated to prevent than to produce mobility in a normally placed kidney. It now remains to state plainly the causes which especially contribute to the mobility of the 7'ight Icidney. This position is all the more forcible inasmuch as, with the exception of sudden violence affecting one side, the causes of mobility hitherto considered act equally on both sides of the body. (a) The assumption that the right kidney is the larger and heavier is disproved by numerous determinations by Bayer and 8appey. (&) Gueneau de Mussy assigns the usual tendency of the uterus to rise in pregnancy towards the right side as a cause, witAiout further explaining the connection. (c) Lancereaux thinks that there is possibly a special con- nection between the right ovarian and renal plexus, produ- cing at every menstrual period congestion and consequent expansion of the capsule of the right kidney. (cZ) CruveilMer in this connection also makes stays answer- able for depressing the right kidney, on the ground that their pressure squeezes the kidney beneath the liver, just as a slippery cherry-stone is flipped between two fingers, whereas the left hypochondrium, occupied as it is by the spleen and cardiac end of the stomach, bears the pressure of the bodice with impunity. {e) According to Muller-Warnech also the liver, and therefore the right kidney which normally lies distinctly the lower down, are specially afi:ected by laced bodies. This supposition is, however, not to the purpose, for normally the right kidney lies very slightly if at all lower down than the left, so that the left kidney being deprived of the protection of the bulky liver must be much more exposed to pressure than the right. [f) Other authors make the liver alone answerable for the frequency of moveable kidney on the right side, but finally acknowledge with Eollct that: The reason why the right