468 OF SECRETION AND EXCRETION. 



Mayer 1 found that when the two kidneys were extirpated in the guinea-pig, 

 the cavities of the peritoneum and the pleura, the ventricles of the brain, 

 the stomach, and the intestinal canal, contained a brownish liquid having 

 the odor of urine ; that the tears exhaled the same odor ; that the gall-blad- 

 der contained a brownish liquid not resembling bile ; and that the testes, the 

 epididymis, the vasa deferentia, and the vesiculse seminales, were gorged 

 with a liquid perfectly similar to urine. Chirac and Helvetius are quoted 

 by Haller as having tied the renal arteries in dogs, and having then re- 

 marked that a urinous fluid was passed off from the stomach by vomiting. 

 A remarkable case is quoted by Nysteu from Zeviani, in which a young 

 woman having received an incised wound on the external genitals, which 

 would not heal, the urine gradually became more scanty, until none could 

 be passed even with the assistance of the catheter ; at last dropsy super- 

 vened, with sweats of a uriuous odor, and vomiting of a urinous fluid, which 

 continued daily for thirty-three years ; on post-mortem examination, the kid- 

 neys were found disorganized, the right ureter entirely obliterated and the 

 left nearly so, and the bladder contracted to the size of a pigeon's egg. In 

 some other instances, the urine appears to have been secreted, and then re- 

 absorbed in consequence of some obstruction to its exit through the urinary 

 passages. Thus Nysten quotes a case from Wrisberg, in which, the urethra 

 having been partially obstructed for ten years by an enlarged prostate, the 

 bladder was so distended as to contain ten pounds of urine ; and the serosity 

 of the pericardium and of the ventricles of the brain exhaled a urinous 

 odor. He cites other instances, in which the presence of calculi in the blad- 

 der prevented the due discharge of the secretion ; and in which a urinous 

 liquid was ejected from the stomach by vomiting, or was discharged by stool. 

 A still more remarkable case is recorded, of a girl born without either anus 

 or external genitals, who. nevertheless remained in good health to the age of 

 fifteen years, passing her urine from the nipples, and getting rid of fecal 

 matters by vomiting. There are cases, moreover, in which it would seem 

 that the mucous lining of the urinary bladder must have had a special 

 power of secreting urine ; the usual discharge having taken place to the end 

 of life, when, as appeared by post-mortem examination, the kidneys were so 

 completely disorganized that they could not have furnished it, or had been 

 prevented by original malformation, or by ligature of the ureters, from dis- 

 charging it into the bladder. A considerable number of these have been 

 collected by Burdach. 2 In all the older statements of this kind, there is a 

 deficiency of evidence that the fluids were really uriuous, urea not having 

 been obtained from them by chemical analysis, and the smell having been 

 chiefly relied on. The urinous odor, however, when distinct, is probably 

 nearly as good an indication of the presence of the most characteristic con- 

 stituent of human urine, as is the appearance of the urea in its separated 

 form. The passage of a urinous fluid from the skin has been frequently ob- 

 served in cases in which the renal secretion was scanty; and the critical 

 sweats, by which attacks of gout sometknes terminate, contain urates and 

 phosphates in such abundance as to form a powdery deposit on the surface. 



385. The metastasis of the Biliary secretion is familiar to every practitioner, 

 as being the change on which jaundice is dependent. It is not, however, in 

 every case of yellowish-brown discoloration of the tissues, that we are to im- 

 pute such discoloration to the presence of biliary matter ; and we can only 

 safely do so, when we have at the same time evidence of concurrent obstruc- 

 tion of the biliary apparatus. The urinary apparatus then affords the principal 



i Zcitschrift fur Physiologic, Bd. ii, p. 270. 2 Idem, pp. 253, 254. 



