Observations on the functional disorders of the kidneys, which give rise to the formation of urinary calculi : with remarks on their frequency in the county of Norfolk / by William England.

Date:
[1830]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the functional disorders of the kidneys, which give rise to the formation of urinary calculi : with remarks on their frequency in the county of Norfolk / by William England. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    last fifty years, it must be very obvious that the operations of chemical affinity must become altogether ineffective when we wish to make it exert any influence over vital laws ; in fact, chemical agents, when they operate upon the animal economy, are altogether modified in their action by the laws of life. The application of chemical reasoning to Pathology is in no case so erroneous, as when an endeavour is made to account for the origin of calculous diseases upon chemical principles: the necessary consequence of directing our in- vestigation in such a path, is that we are apt to overlook altogether the susceptibility which the kidney as well as any other secreting gland has of taking on certain morbid actions.—As a proof of the tendency which an exclusive direction of our views to the play of chemical affinities has to render us blind to the consideration of the vital powers of a gland, that excellent practical chemist Dr. Marcet attributed the formation of urinary concretions to a separation and consoli- dation of certain ingredients contained in the Urine, for he says that independent of any specific agency of the urinary organs themselves, calculi are liable to form in any of the cavities to which the Urine has access. * Marcet on Calculous Diseases.