THE KIDNEY 55 



demonstrating an internal secretion on the part of the kidney, 

 and still less as pointing to the treatment of nephritis in man 

 by means of kidney extracts. Notwithstanding this certain 

 writers report good results in cases of chronic nephritis after 

 treatment with kidney extracts by the mouth. 



Lindemann found that guinea-pigs, after having received 

 injections of rabbit-kidney emulsions, furnished a serum which 

 was very toxic to rabbits, giving rise to albuminuria and uraemia. 

 The injection of this nephrolytic serum provokes symptoms 

 precisely similar to those induced by true kidney poisons. 

 Here we have the formation of certain specific substances 

 formed in the blood under the influences of the processes of 

 absorption of the renal substance injected, and these are the 

 substances which affect the kidney. Schiiltze could not observe 

 the nephrotoxic effect of the serum of rabbits into which he 

 had injected an emulsion of guinea-pig kidney. This observer 

 also could not confirm the hepatolytic effect of the sera of 

 animals which had been injected with liver emulsion, although 

 Delezenne and Deutsch affirm that animals into which one 

 injects liver emulsions furnish a serum which possesses powerful 

 hepatotoxic properties. 



Nefedieff believes firmly in a specific nephrotoxic serum in 

 Lindemann's sense. He states further that this serum is also 

 ha3molytic. The serum is analogous to the cytotoxins in 

 general. Under the influence of hypodermic injections of 

 kidney emulsion from healthy animals there appear in the 

 blood of rabbits and guinea-pigs certain substances which 

 exercise an injurious effect on the kidneys of the species of 

 animal whose organs have been used in the preparation of the 

 emulsion. Nefedieff found also that the serum of rabbits in 

 which one of the ureters had been tied soon acquires powerful 

 nephrotoxic properties. He suggests that in this case substances 

 pass from the kidneys into the blood just as they do when an 

 emulsion of the kidney has been injected. 



Arguments of an analogous kind have also been used to 

 explain the causation of oedema in nephritis. Kast observed 

 that the blood of nephritics with oedema contains a lymphagogue 

 substance of great strength, which also passes out into the 

 dropsical fluid. Blanck noted, in investigating the serum of 

 animals with uranium nephritis and uranium oedema, and of 

 rabbits with chromium or aloin nephritis (which does not give 



