Intravenous and Retrograde Urography

Urology stands on two sturdy supporting limbs: the instruments for precisive visual diagnosis, of which the cystoscope is the foundation stone, and urography. Because of accuracy in diagnosis and the controlling power throughout the course of most maladies of the urinary tract, afforded by their regular adaptation, an unpretentious specialty has risen to a very high plane in little more than one human generation. Nearly thirty years ago, the roentgen ray was made immeasurably valuable in the study of urogenital lesions by the successful practice of pyelography, while prior to that time some of the most spectacular films or plates for public and professional demonstration of the virtues and possibilities of the x-rays were those depicting images of stone in the urinary tract. Lower and Nichols1state that perhaps in no other field of medicine and surgery has the roentgenogram been of more signal value than in the diagnosis