THE URINARY ORGANS. 201 



glomerulus is often visible on the wall. As abnormal contents, 

 the tubuli uriniferi present : 1 . blood, most frequently in the 

 commencement of the convoluted tubules, especially the super- 

 ficial, often in such quantity as to produce bloody points as big 

 as a pin's head, and visible to the naked eye, which were 

 formerly erroneously regarded as distended Malpighian bodies. 

 2. fibrin, in cylindrical masses, corresponding to the cavity of 

 the tubules. 3. the above-mentioned colloid-like substance. 

 4. concretions in the ducts of Bellini, consisting, in the adult, 

 chiefly of carbonate and phosphate of lime ("Kalkinfarct"); in 

 new-born infants, of uric acid-salts (" Harns'dureinfarct" 

 Virchow), which give the pyramids a brilliant gold-yellow 

 colour, and, if not exclusively, still usually, occur only in 

 children who have already respired (between the third and 

 twentieth day after birth). In the later stages of " Bright' s" 

 disease, many tubuli, which have lost their epithelium in con- 

 sequence of the exudations poured out in them, become atro- 

 phied, and ultimately disappear altogether, whilst groups of 

 others are seen, filled with a fatty, broken-up exudation, and 

 dilated into minute nodosities (granulations, Christison).] 



§ 189. 

 Vessels and nerves. — The large renal artery divides, in the 

 pelvis of the kidney, into a certain number of branches, which, 

 after supplying the parts lying in the hilus, enter, above and 

 below the renal veins, the cortical substance interposed between 

 the pyramids (the columnce Bertini). From this point they are 

 continued, repeatedly dividing, close upon the boundary of the 

 two renal substances, so that around each pyramid a delicate 

 ramification, but without any anastomoses, usually afforded only 

 by two large arteries, is formed. From this ramification, on 

 the side looking towards the cortical substance, there arise, with 

 great regularity, and for the most part at right angles, smaller 

 arteries, which after a few or more repeated divisions give off 

 fine twigs, 06 — O'l'" in diameter, which run outwardly in a 

 straight course between the cortical fasciculi or lobules, and are 

 most fitly termed arteries interlobular es (fig. 245 a). It is 

 these twigs which support the Malpighian bodies, and, with the 

 exception of some branches to the coats of the organ, they 

 terminate exclusively in the formation of their vascular coils. 



