Diagnosis of renal calculus in women / by Howard A. Kelly.

  • Howard Atwood Kelly
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diagnosis of renal calculus in women / by Howard A. Kelly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from The Medical News, November 30, 1895.] DIAGNOSIS OF RENAL CALCULUS IN WOMEN. BY HOWARD A. KELLY, M.D., OP BALTIMORE, MD. ; PROFESSOR OP GYNECOLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. It becomes more and more evident with the in- creasing frequency of operations upon the kidney that serious errors in the diagnosis of renal calculus are often committed. Not infrequently a patient who has a persistent pain in the lumbar region, blood or pus in the urine, or a retroperitoneal lumbar tumor, is operated upon for calculus of the kidney, and the operation fails to demonstrate the existence of the stone. I have seen repeated failures where all these signs existed in the same patient and had persisted for a long time. The presence of pus in the urine is one of the most characteristic signs of calculus in the pelvis of the kidney, but from the mixed urines of the bladder it is impossible to say from which side the pus comes; or, if pain and swelling point distinctly to one side, it cannot be asserted after any ordinary examination that the other side is not affected too. In so far as pus is diagnostic of the presence of a stone in the kidney, and it is one of the most charac- teristic factors, though by no means pathognomonic,