DISEASES OF THE URINARY ORGANS. 
By James Law, F. R. C. V.S8., 
Formerly Professor of Veterinary Science, etc., in Cornell University. 
USES OF THE URINARY ORGANS. 
The urinary organs constitute the main channel through which are 
excreted the nitrogenous or albuminoid principles, whether derived 
directly from the feed or from the muscular and other nitrogenized 
tissues of the body. They constitute, besides, the channel through 
which are thrown out most of the poisons, whether taken in by the 
mouth or skin or developed in connection with faulty or natural 
digestion, blood-forming, nutrition, or tissue destruction; or, finally, 
poisons that are developed within the body, as the result of normal 
cell life or of the life of bacterial or other germs that have entered the 
body from without. Bacteria themselves largely escape from the 
body through the kidneys. Toa 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 system, or other organs. Nor is this 
influence one-sided. Scarcely an important organ of the body can 
suffer derangement without entailing a corresponding disorder of the 
urinary system. Nothing can be more striking than the mutual bal- 
ance maintained between the liquid secretions of the skin and kidneys 
during hot and cold weather. In summer, when so much liquid ex- 
hales through the skin as sweat, comparatively little urine is passed, 
whereas in winter, when the skin is inactive, the urine is correspond- 
ingly increased. This vicarious action of skin and kidneys is usually 
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 crystallize out and form stone and 
gravel. Similarly the passage, in the sweat, of some of the solids 
that normally leave the body, 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 
the urine; of an excess of hippuric acid and allied products which, 
being less soluble than urea (the normal product of tissue change), 
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