On the study of renal function / Henry A. Christian, M.D., Boston Massachusetts, Theodore C. Janeway, M.D., New York, N.Y., Leonard G. Rowntree, M.D., Baltimore, MD.

  • Christian, Henry A. (Henry Asbury), 1876-1951
Date:
[1913?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the study of renal function / Henry A. Christian, M.D., Boston Massachusetts, Theodore C. Janeway, M.D., New York, N.Y., Leonard G. Rowntree, M.D., Baltimore, MD. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ON THE STUDY OF RENAL FUNCTION: THE RELATION OF FUNCTIONAL TESTS TO PATHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS. HENRY A. CHRISTIAN, M.D., Boston, Massachusetts. The topic selected for discussion this afternoon, renal function, is one of interest to both physician and surgeon, for it deals with the means of measuring an excretory activity, necessary to life, of an organ subject to pathological changes in character diffuse, requiring medical management, or focal, demanding surgical opera¬ tion. In either event, it is important to know, how well do the kidneys, combined or singly, function, and what has been the effect on function of remedial measures, for on this depends the prospects of continued life, or the risk of surgical treatment. The problem of renal function has been one long under discus¬ sion and observation. The kidneys pouring their excretion, the urine, quite directly into the external world lend themselves readily to certain forms of study of their function, namely observation of changes occurring in the urine affecting the color, the reaction, the concentration, the character and quantity of various normal con¬ stituents, and the presence, qualitative and quantitative, of sub¬ stances not found normally in the urine. At first crudely observed, these observations decade by decade have been made with increasing refinement of method. Medical men in one way or another have long noted urinary variations, and from them have drawn inferences as to the health of the individual as well as inferences as to morphological changes in the kidneys. Much of the earlier work has concerned itself in the attempt to correlate urinary findings with renal morphology, to infer on the part of the clinician what lesions the kidney will reveal to the pathologist. Refinement of urinary analysis led to classification of variations in the urine, which in conjunction with observation of the patient’s condition seemed to justify the diagnosis of different renal lesions. The pathologists, with improvements in technical methods, divided and subdivided renal lesions until a