Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

335/440 (page 317)

the general liealfcli) ceases during pregnancy, contributes essentially to the relief of the disturbances caused by moveable kidney. Some observers, as Eare and Oppolzer, have indeed observed cures of moveable kidney during pregnancy, wliich cannot be doubted when the same experiences are remem- bered in the case of prolapse of the vagina and uterus. Whether moveable kidney exercises an injurious influence on the other hand on the pregnant uterus, is as yet unknown. It is however not unlikely that where it has descended very , low, or in case of complications such as interruption of the circulation in the renal vein (in the former case mechanically, in the latter by the great disorder of the circulation), it is capable of inducing abortion, as indeed happened in the case related by JEger. That this is not inevitable in cases of intermittent hydronephrosis is proved by the observations of Johnson and Eger, in whose cases also the growing uterus appeared to undo the kinking and twisting of the ureter, and to make it pervious for the urine. Dearth of observations prevents us from stating a ijriori the exact mutual relations between labour and acquired moveable kidney. The cases of Ghaonhon cle Moniaux (155) (in which a kidney was found incarcerated behind the grow- ing uterus), Boinet (156) (who observed a deviation of the uterus, caused by a kidney lying behind the bladder), and Sohl (157) (in which a displaced kidney is said to have formed an obstruction to labour), one and all concern cases •of congenital malformation and probably of displacement with subsequent fixation. Moreover the case of Hohl is so inac- curately and unscientifically described that it cannot be utilised to prove anything. It is however obvious, as well as established by many cases, that the pressure which occurs in labour is capable of acting injuiuously on the kidney. Women therefore who have a moveable kidney must be cautioned against bearing down too strongly during labour.