396 URINE. 



and in some cases even exhibits a decided sediment of a dirty 

 yellow colour. It has a nauseous, sweetish odour, and an alkaline 

 reaction. 



The urine of birds and amphibia animals in whom the ureters 

 open into the rectum is gelatinous, semi-fluid, and translucent, 

 when freshly discharged ; it rapidly dries in the air, and is then 

 converted into white, cheese-like, crumbling masses. 



The normal urine contains fewer morphological cons tit uentst\\a.r\ 

 any other animal fluid, although the peculiarly formed pavement 

 epithelium of the urinary passages, and more especially of the 

 bladder, are never wholly absent. Virchow has drawn attention 

 to the different forms of the epithelium of the bladder, which 

 sometimes resembles three-toothed clamps, within which por- 

 tions of the ordinarily shaped pavement epithelium are inclosed. 

 The appearance of such cells in the urine is only of rare occur- 

 rence ; they are found connected together, when the urine exhibits 

 an abundant supply of epithelium, which had been peeled off 

 within the urinary tubes ; this is frequently the case after scar- 

 latina, and less constantly after erysipelas. 



The mucous sediment of normal urine is found, on a careful 

 microscopical investigation, to contain well-formed mucus- 

 corpuscles, having a simple, lenticular nucleus. These bodies 

 occur in increased quantities even on slight irritations of the 

 mucous membrane of the bladder, and, still more constantly, in 

 vesical catarrh and pyelitis, when the urine often deposits a con- 

 siderable, and apparently purulent sediment. In gonorrhoea, the 

 mucus-corpuscles arising from the urethra are distinguished from 

 those of the bladder and the remainder of the urinary tract by their 

 greater size, and by their vitreous and but slightly granular appearance. 



Among the different molecules of morbid urine which have 

 been recognised by the aid of the microscope, special attention 

 has been directed to the tube-like, or cylindrical bodies investigated 

 by Nasse,* Henle,t and Simon.J On attempting to classify 

 them by their texture, we find that they admit of being divided 

 into three kinds : the first class embracing those tube-like for- 

 mations, which appear to consist of the epithelial investment of 

 the tubes of Bellini ; they are tolerably regular cylinders, to 

 which the small cells and nuclei appear to adhere in a 

 somewhat honeycomb arrangement. These cylinders do not in 

 general occur excepting in the desquarnative stage of acute exan- 



* Correspondenzbl. rh. u. Westph. Aerzte. 1843, S. 121. : 

 \ Zeitschr. f. rat. Med. Bd. 1, S. 60 u. 68. 

 1 Mailer's Arch. 1843, S. 26. 



