380 STRUCTURE AND PATHOLOGY 



weeks, a Memoir,* in which it is proved that the urine, bile, 

 milk, as well as the other more important secretions in the 

 lower animals, are formed within the nucleated cells of the 

 gland-ducts. I believe, therefore, that the urine of man is 

 poured at first into the cavities of the nucleated cells of the 

 human kidney. I do not pretend to decide whether the 

 morbid changes in the kidneys, in the various stages of the 

 granular disease of Bright, originate in inflammation or simply 

 in congestion of the gland, but may remind the Society of 

 those changes which, at a former meeting,! I announced as 

 occurring in the vesicular glands of the intestine during 

 fever namely, the formation and progressive increase of 

 nucleated cells (probably aberrant forms of the epithelium 

 which lines the vesicles) within the vesicles of the patches, 

 and may now state that granular degeneration of the kidney 

 has a similar increase ; that it consists essentially of the 

 formation of nucleated cells within the uriniferous ducts ; 

 that these new cells were principally confined to the ultimate 

 loops of the ducts, but that, in advanced stages of the disease, 

 they may be formed even in the tubes of the pyramids of 

 Ferrein ; that when a single ultimate loop of the uriniferous 

 ducts was gorged, or distended with the increasing mass of 

 germinating cells, or when two or more neighbouring loops 

 were in this condition, the little mass constituted one of the 

 granulations characteristic of the milder forms of the disease ; 

 that when throughout the gland, or in certain portions of it, 

 the germinating masses had so far distended the ducts and 

 loops as to cause their disappearance, and to induce absorp- 

 tion of the walls of the little chambers of the fibro-cellular 

 capsule, and consequently of the uriniferous ducts, the whole 

 of the cortical portion of the gland, or that part of it more 

 particularly affected, assumed the appearance presented in 



* See the Memoir " On Secreting Structures," No. XXV. of this volume, 

 t See No. XIX. of this volume. 



