OF SECRETION IN GENERAL. 



579 



by the testes, by the ears, nose, and navel, by parts of the ordinary cutaneous 

 surface, and even by serous membranes, such as the arachnoid lining the ven- 

 tricles of the brain, the pleura, and the peritoneum. A considerable number of 

 such cases was collected by Haller i 1 many more were brought together by 

 Nysten ; a more recently Burdach has furnished a full summary of the most im- 

 portant phenomena of the kind ; 3 and Dr. Laycock has compiled a valuable col- 

 lection of cases of urinary metastasis occurring as complications of hysteria. 4 

 The following table of cases referred to by the last of these authors will give 

 some idea of the relative frequency of the different forms of this curious affec- 

 tion : 



It is to be borne in mind, however, that cases of hysterical ischuria are fre- 

 quently complicated with that strange moral perversion which leads to the 

 most persevering and ingenious attempts at deceit; and there can be little doubt 

 that a good many of the instances on record, especially of urinous vomiting, 

 are by no means veritable examples of metastasis. The proofs of the fact we 

 are seeking to establish are, therefore, much more satisfactory when drawn from 

 experiments upon animals, or from pathological observations, about which, from 

 their very nature, there can be no mistake. Thus Mayer 5 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-bladder contained a brownish liquid not 

 resembling bile ; and that the testicles, the epididymis, the vasa deferentia, and 

 the vesiculae 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 remarked that a urinous fluid was passed off from the 

 stomach by vomiting. A remarkable case is quoted by Nysten 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, and at 

 last none could be passed ev,en with the assistance of the catheter ; at last 

 dropsy supervened, with sweats of a urinous odor, and vomiting of a urinous 

 fluid, which continued daily for thirty-three years. On post-mortem examina- 

 tion, the kidneys 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 

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

 passages. Thus Nysten quotes from Wrisberg a case 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 bladder 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 re- 

 markable case is recorded of a girl born without either anus or external geni- 



Elementa Physiologise," torn. ii. p. 370. 



Recherches de Physiologic et de Chimie pathologique," p. 265. 



Trait6 de Physiologic" (Jourdan's Translation), vol. viii. p. 248, et sea. 



Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ.," 1838. 



Zeitschrift fur Physiologic," torn. ii. p. 270. 



