DISEASES OF THE URINARY ORGANS. 



By James Law, F. R. C. Y. S., 



Professor of Veterinary Science, etc., in Cornell Unhersity. 

 [Revised in 1903 by the author.] 



USES OF THE URINARY ORGANS. 



The urinar}' organs constitute the main channel tlirough which are 

 excreted the nitrog-enons or albuminoid principles, whether derived 

 directly from the food or from the muscular and other uitrogenized 

 tissues of the body. They constitute, besides, the channel through 

 which are thrown out most of the poisons, whether taken in b}^ the 

 mouth or skin or developed in connection with faulty or natural diges- 

 tion, blood-forming, nutrition, or tissue destruction; or, finall}^, poi- 

 sons that are developed within the body, as the result of normal cell 

 life or of the life of bacteria or other germs that have entered the 

 body from without. Bacteria themselves largely escape from the 

 body through the kidneys. To a large extent, therefore, these organs 

 are the sanitary scavengers and purifiers of the system, and when their 

 functions are impaired or arrested the retained poisons quickly show 

 their presence in resulting disorders of the skin and connective tissue 

 beneath it, of the nervous sj^stem, or other organs. Nor is this influ- 

 ence one-sided. Scarcely an important organ of the body can suffer 

 derangement without entailing a corresponding disorder of the urinary 

 sj^stem. Nothing can be more striking than the mutual balance main- 

 tained between the liquid secretions of the skin and kidne3's during 

 hot and cold weather. In summer, when so much liquid exhales 

 through the skin as sweat, comparatively little urine is passed, whereas 

 in winter, when the skin is inactive, the urine is correspondingly 

 increased. This vicarious action of skin and kidneys is usuallj^ kept 

 within the limits of health, but at times the draining off of the water 

 by the skin leaves too little to keep the solids of the urine safely In 

 solution, and these are liable to cr3^stallize out and form stone and 

 gravel. Similarly the passage in the sweat of some of the solids that 

 normally leave the bod}^, dissolved in the urine, serves to irritate the 

 skin and produce troublesome eruptions. 



PROMINENT CAUSES OF URINARY DISORDERS. 



A disordered liver contributes to the production, under different 

 circumstances, of an excess of biliary coloring matter, which stains 



