DISEASES OF THE BLADDER.
BY EDWARD L. KEYES, M.D.
Inflammation.
The bladder is a patient organ, and rather slow to resent injuries from within or without. It never inflames on account of such general causes as the influence of cold, anæmia, cachexia, or a depressed state of the general system. Any of these causes may act as adjuvants, but alone they are not effective. Thus a chilling of the legs, inoperative upon an individual with a healthy bladder, is a prime factor in exciting inflammation in the bladder of an old man with an enlarged prostate; while the simple passage of a sound upon an individual suffering from anæmia might provoke a cystitis which the same traumatic cause would not have produced upon a patient in a thoroughly healthy condition.
Yet inflammation of the bladder is very common. It is sometimes a malady, more often a symptom produced by some other malady (stricture, prostatic enlargement, stone), and only to be overcome by detecting and removing its cause. The causes of inflammation of the bladder therefore include nearly all the maladies to which the bladder is liable.
The varieties of cystitis take name from that tissue of the viscus which is involved, and from the modality of the inflammation.
We have—