The anomalous contents of the urinary passages are very various, and may be classified as follows:

1. The products of the organic affections of the secretory as well as the efferent apparatus; they are the more intimately mixed with the urine, the nearer the point of their formation is to the place where the latter is secreted, and the greater their capability of suspension and their solubility.

2. The deviations which the urine presents, independent of the first-mentioned admixtures, whether accompanied by a demonstrable disease of the renal texture, or unassociated with any traces of structural disease: they result from an anomaly in the vegetative sphere, and especially in the blood; they may also occur as a passing effect of certain indulgences, and they relate to the quantity and quality, and particularly to the physical characters of the urine.

In reference to 1, we have to notice: a. The blood and certain of its component parts. The former (haematuria) is found in the urinary passages, to a larger or smaller amount, in the shape of rounded or cylindrical coagula of varying consistency, or mixed with the urine in a fluid condition. It appears in consequence of various injuries involving the kidneys and the urinary apparatus, produced by means of cutting instruments, concretions, ruptures, apoplexy of the kidney, the bursting of an aneurism into the urinary passages, or of varicose veins into the bladder, ulcerative corrosion of a vessel, or bleeding carcinomatous growths in the urinary organs. It results from hyperaemia, nephritis, Bright's disease, hemorrhagic inflammation of the passages, and from disorganization of the blood. Sometimes it is not true blood - blood-globules - but mere haematosine, which passes into the urine from the serum in the kidneys. We also find other constituents of the blood, such as albumen and fibrine, in the urine.

Albumen is discovered in the course of numerous diseases both accompanied by and unassociated with renal disease. In many acute diseases, albuminous urine is secreted with an excess of lithic acid, and lithate of ammonia. Albumen is sometimes found with sugar in diabetic urine; it always occurs in hemorrhage into and inflammation of the urinary passages, in hyperaemia, nephritis, etc. It is found to a large amount in Bright's disease of the kidney, frequently mixed up with blood-globules, or haematosine. Its presence is demonstrated by milky turbidity of urine, by the urine foaming when air is blown into it, by coagulation of the albumen on the application of heat, the addition of alcohol or nitric acid, etc.

Fibrine is said to have been found in the urine in some cases of dropsy; in the case of hemorrhage into the urinary apparatus it forms coagula of various shapes and sizes, which are easily recognized.

b. Exudations in the urinary passages, assuming the shape of flocculi, laminae and tubular concretions.

c. Grayish, milky, vitreous, colorless, purulent yellow (blennorrhoic) mucus, pus and sanies, may be intimately blended with the urine, causing it to be variously discolored or turbid, or forming flocculent concretions, and loose, crummy, viscid, glutinous sediments. Mucus appears in the urine as the effect of acute, but more frequently of chronic catarrhal inflammation of the urinary passages. Pus and sanies are the result of suppuration of the kidneys, with discharge of the abscess into the urinary passages, and of suppuration, and the formation of sanies in the latter; or these fluids reach the urinary cavities from neighboring organs by ulcerated communications; they may also be the consequence of gangrene, tubercular or cancerous degeneration. We also find in the urine, besides the above-mentioned substances, epithelial lamellae, tubercular matter, elementary cells of cancer, etc.

d. It is stated that the urine contains a substance resembling cerebral fat, when the kidney is affected with medullary cancer. The immediate condition of this occurrence has not as yet been determined; it is probably essential that the morbid growth should have forced its way into the urinary passages, or that it should project into them.

e. Ancient and modern observers have noticed that hairs are sometimes evacuated with the urine; they may be formed within or external to the urinary organs.

/. Within the most recent period, Curling has discovered a new ento-zoon, the dactylitis aculeatus, in the bladder. A very recent case is also given of the discharge of cysticerci with the urine; acephalocysts are frequently carried into the urinary passages both from the kidneys and from other organs, and are evacuated with the urine.

In reference to 2, we observe that the deviations of the urine, as regards quantity, may consist in excessive or diminished secretion; if the quantity found in the dead subject be small, it is requisite to ascertain the evacuations that have taken place before death; if considerable, the obstacles to its discharge must be inquired into. Urine presents various anomalies as to quality, affecting both its physical and chemical properties.

a. The color of the urine is either too intense, owing to a large amount of coloring matter, which is generally combined with lithic acid or urea; or it is very pale, and, at the same time, less acid or neutral. The urine assumes a red color from an admixture of blood or its coloring matter; if there is at the same time an excess of acid, it may become reddish-brown, brownish-black, or in very rare cases, which are probably dependent upon an alteration in the hsematosine, it may even become perfectly black. Biliary matter produces a yellow, yellowish-brown, or even greenish discoloration. We must finally allude to those anomalous appearances of the urine produced by the consumption of various substances that are rich in coloring matter, as beet-root, madder, rhubarb, gamboge, chelidonium, indigo, ink. The urine may at the same time be transparent or turbid; the latter, in so far as it is independent of the above-mentioned foreign admixtures, is proportionate to the lithic acid or lithate of ammonia contained in acid, or to the phosphates in alkaline urine.

b. The odor of urine is either more or less powerful than in the normal condition; thus the pale watery urine is frequently almost without smell, whereas the saturated urine of acute rheumatism or of pneumonia smells very strongly. Occasionally the urine presents the odor of broth or of whey; in diabetes mellitus it has a spirituous smell, owing to the commencement of fermentation, or its odor resembles that of decomposed straw, of putrid matter, or is very pungent. Different odors are perceived after the consumption of asparagus, turpentine, the balsams, leek, assafoetida, etc. In diabetes mellitus, the urine has a sweet taste.