Volume 1

A text-book of human physiology : including histology and microscopical anatomy with special reference to the requirements of practical medicine / by L. Landois ; translated from the seventh German edition with additions by William Stirling.

Landois, L. (Leonard), 1837-1902. Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen. English

Date:: 1891

Credit: A text-book of human physiology : including histology and microscopical anatomy with special reference to the requirements of practical medicine / by L. Landois ; translated from the seventh German edition with additions by William Stirling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

565/602 page 525

$Sec. 273.] EXPERIMENTS WITH SULPHINDIGOTATE OF SODA. The watery part of the urme, containing only easily diffusible salts, as it flows along the tubules from the glomeruli, extracts or washes out these substances from the secretory epithelium of the convoluted tubules. Experiments with sulphindigotate of soda.—1. Sulphindigotate of soda and sodium urate, when injected into the blood, pass into the urine, and are found within the protoplasma of the cells of the convoluted tubules [only in those parts lined by rodded epithelium], but not in the Malpighian capsules {Heidenliain). A little later these substances are found in the lumen of the urinary tubules, from which they are washed out by the ^vatery part of the urine coming from the glomeruli. If, however, two days before the injection of these substances into the blood, the cortical part of the kidney containing the Malpighian capsules be caut- erised [e.g., by nitrate of silver], or sliced off, the blue pigment remains within the convoluted tubules. It cannot 1)e carried onward, as the water which should carry it along has ceased to Idc secreted, owing to the destruction of the glomeruli. This experiment also goes to show that through the glomeridi the waUry part of the urine is chiefly excreted, while through the convolided tid^ulestlie specific urinary condituents are excreted. [When a large quantity of the ]3ure sulphindigotate is injected into the blood, within less than half an hour the cortex and pyramids become deep blue ; the boundary zone, as a rule, is lighter in tint (fig. 343). The blue pigment is found Fig. 34.3. Fig. 344. Fig. 345. Fig. 343.—Section of a rabbit's kidney after the injection of a large quantity of sulpliindigotate of soda into the blood. Fig. 344.—Section of a rabbit's kidney. Section of the spinal cord and snbseqnent injection of sulphindigotate of soda. Note that the pigment is con- fined to the cortex. Fig. 345.—Section of a rabbit's kidney. The surface between c and g and h and d was cauterised. There is the normal appearance in the areas fc, gh, db, but arrest of the secretion of water in eg and hd. in the epithelium of the convoluted tubules, or in their lumen, but never in the epithelium of the straight tubules, although a large amount is found in the lumina, es]-)ecially of the collecting-tubes.] [If, however, the spinal cord be divided so as to lower the arterial blood-pressure, and thus arrest the secretion of water, and a small quantity of the sulphindigotate be injected into the blood, the blue pigment is secreted from the lymph, itself nearly colourless, by the convoluted tubules and the looped tubules of Henle. Owing to the arrest of the watery part of the secretion, the pigment remains in the cortex and the kidney presents the appearance shown in fig. 344.] [Fig. 345 shows the effect of cauterising the surface of the kidney with silver nitrate. In the cauterised area the secretion of water within the capsules ceases, while the secretion of the pigment by the convoluted tubules is not arrested, so that in the normal areas one has the appearances shown in fig. 343 and in the cauterised area that of fig. 345]. Uric acid salts, injected into the blood, were observed by Heidenhain to be excreted by the convoluted tubules. Yon Wittich had previously observed that in birds, crystals of uric acid were excreted by the epithelium of the convoluted tubules. [The presence of crystals of uric acid in the renal epithelium was$