An Investigation Into the Microscopic Anatomy of Interstitial Nephritis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... are sharply defined, round in shape, never fusiform or clavate, though they may be oval, and larger and more opaque than the lymphoid cells. Then, again, they lie in relation to portions of compressed tubules, which afford a ready means of identifying them. As to the tubules themselves, it is the author's belief that their basement membrane never becomes disintegrated. It enters into the process going on around it, and undergoes fibrillation with even greater readiness than the new material itself. If warrant for this assertion be demanded, the author would direct attention to the constricting ring generally seen around an atrophied tubule, which ring is formed of the thickened basement membrane, which (as in the case of Bowman's capsules) is distinctly more fibrillated than the surrounding small-cell tissue. (See Niemeyer; Humphreys and Hackley's Tram., 1876, vol. II., page 23; also Wilks and Moxon's Pathology, page 509). In these constricting rings, and in the thickened Bowman's capsules, spindles are often very apparent; and in these two situations, as also in the increased connective tissue around the vessels, the process of transformation of the round-cells first into spindles, and subsequently into fibres, may be very satisfactorily observed. Not that it is at all difficult to recognise it elsewhere; but in these places it is often very plainly and beautifully exemplified. Later on, the same thing occurs in the adventitia proper of the renal arterioles, which becomes thickened, and is presently blended with the surrounding new material. (See Plate ix.) It should, however, be distinctly understood that this is a secondary change. The fibrotic process, far from beginning in the adventitia of the arterioles, involves it only when the...