The understanding of the connection between dropsy and hard kidneys was not lost to the Arabs, and Avicenna (apparently following personal observations) also described quite strikingly the state of the urine of dropsical patients suffering from hardening of the kidneys or a hard abscess of these organs.11 Furthermore, he supposes that a kind of connection exists between diseased kidneys and affection of the liver that leads to dropsy.12 But he does not think it necessary that both organs should be diseased simultaneously for dropsy to develop.13
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