Book 2
2
The cause of it may be, that some one of the acute diseases may have terminated in this; and during the crisis the diseases may have left some malignity lurking in the part. It is not improbable, also, that something pernicious, derived from the other diseases which attack the bladder and kidneys, may sometimes prove the cause of this affection. But if any one is bitten by the dipsas,The dipsas was a species of viper. See Paulus Ægineta, ii. p. 185. the affection induced by the wound is of this nature; for the reptile, the dipsas, if it bite one, kindles up an unquenchable thirst. For they drink copiously, not as a remedy for the thirst, but so as to produce repletion of the bowels by the insatiable desire of drink. But if one be pained by the distension of the bowels and feel uncomfortable, and abstain from drink for a little, he again drinks copiously from thirst, and thus the evils alternate; for the thirst and the drink conspire together. Others do not pass urine, nor is there any relief from what is drank. Wherefore, what from insatiable thirst, an overflow of liquids, and distension of the belly, the patients have suddenly burst.
CHAPTER III. ON THE AFFECTIONS ABOUT THE KIDNEYS.
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THE kidneys are of a glandular nature, but redder in colour, like the liver, rather than like the mammæ and testicles; for they, too, are glands, but of a whiter colour. In shape they resemble the testicles, but are broader, and, at the same time, curved. Their cavities are small and like sieves, for the percolation of the urine; and these have attached to each of them nervous canals, like reeds, which are inserted into the shoulders of the bladder on each side; and the passage of the urine from each of the kidneys to the bladder is equal.
