The Plumbing and Sewering Of The Body : Part 2

A Handbook of Health
by Woods Hutchinson

(Page 19 of 29)

As all poisons formed in, or entering, the body are brought to the liver for destruction, it is in an extremely exposed position, and very liable to break down under the attack of these poisons, whether of infectious diseases, or chloroform, or alcohol, or those formed by putrefaction in the stomach and intestines. This is why those who have lived long in the tropics and suffered from malaria, dysentery, and other infectious diseases, and those who drink too much alcohol, or have chronic indigestion, or dyspepsia, are likely to have swollen and inflamed livers.

The Gall Bladder. The liver has on its under side a little pear-shaped pouch called the gall bladder, in which the bile is stored before it is poured into the bowel. If this becomes inflamed by disease germs, or their poisons, in the blood, little hard masses will form inside it, usually about the size of a grain of corn, known as gall stones. So long as they stay in the gall bladder, they give little trouble, but if they start to pass out through the narrow bile duct into the intestine, they cause severe attacks of pain, known as "gall-stone colic," and, by blocking up the duct, may dam up the flow of the bile, force it back into the blood again, and stain all our tissues, including our skin and our eyes, yellow; and then we say we are jaundiced. Jaundice may also be caused by colds or other mild infections which attack the liver and bile ducts and clog the proper flow of the bile.

The Kidneys. The kidneys are another form of blood-filter, which deal chiefly with waste stuffs in the blood left from the proteins, or Meats, of our food - meat, fish, milk, cheese, bread, peas, beans, etc. These waste-stuffs, called urea and urates, are formed in the liver and brought in the blood to the kidneys. These lie on either side of the backbone, opposite the small of the back, their lower ends being level with the highest point of the hip-bones, nearly six inches higher than they are usually supposed to be. When you think you have a "pain across the kidneys," it is usually a pain in the muscles of the back much lower down, and has nothing to do with the kidneys at all.

A very large artery carries the blood from the aorta to each side of the kidney, and a large vein carries the purified blood back to the vena cava and heart. Two smaller tubes about the size of a crow quill, the waste pipes of the kidneys (the ureters), carry the water containing urea and other waste substances strained out by the kidneys and called urine, down into a large pouch, the bladder, to be stored there until it can be got rid of.

The kidneys then are big filter-glands. They, like the lungs, are made up of a mesh, or network, of thousands of tiny tubes of two kinds, one set of tubes being blood vessels, and the other set the tiny branches of the kidney tubes which finally run together to form the ureters. The urine filters through from the spongy mesh of blood tubes (capillaries) into the kidney tubes and is poured out through the ureters. It is very important that the urine should be discharged as fast as it fills the bladder, that is, about once every three hours during the day. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with this; and whenever nature tells you that the bladder is full, it should be emptied promptly, or the poisons which nature is trying to get rid of in the urine may get back into the blood and cause serious trouble.

Diseases of the Kidneys. Naturally, the kidneys, working all the time and pouring out, as they do every day, from three to four pints of the liquid waste called urine, are subject to numerous diseases and disturbances. One of the common causes of these is failure to keep the skin thoroughly clean and healthy, as perspiration is of somewhat the same character as the urine; and if it be checked, it throws an extra amount of work upon the kidneys.

Another most important thing to keep the kidneys working well is to drink plenty of water, at least six or eight glasses a day, as well as to eat plenty of fresh green vegetables and fresh fruits, which, as we have seen, are eighty per cent water. Remember, we are a walking aquarium, and all our cells must be kept flooded with and soaked in water in order to be healthy. If the blood becomes overloaded with poisons, so much work may be thrown upon the kidneys that they will become inflamed and diseased and cannot form the urine properly; and then poisons accumulate in the system and finally produce serious illness and even death.

It was at one time believed that eating too much of certain kinds of foods, particularly those that leave much nitrogenous waste in the body, such as meat and fish, could produce a diseased condition of the kidneys, known as Bright's Disease; but we have found that the larger part of such cases are due to the attack of the germs of infectious diseases, particularly scarlet and typhoid fevers, tuberculosis, and colds. The popular impression that colds from wet feet or long drives in winter may "settle in the kidneys" is wrong, except in so far as those colds are caused by infectious germs.

Another cause of disturbance and permanent damage to the kidneys is the habitual use of alcohol. Even though this may be taken in only moderate amounts, the constant soaking of the tissues with even small amounts of alcohol may be most harmful to the kidneys, as well as to the liver.

Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1911, By Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression

About the Author

Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) was an American physician, born at Selby, Yorkshire, England. He graduated from Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1880 and received his medical degree from the University of Michigan four years later. He worked as a professor of anatomy at the State University of Iowa and then became a professor of comparative pathology at the University of Buffalo.