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LITERARY URBAN STUDIES

Irish
Urban Fictions
Edited by Maria Beville · Deirdre Flynn
 Literary Urban Studies

Series Editors
Lieven Ameel
Turku Institute for Advanced Studies
University of Turku
Turku, Finland

Jason Finch
English Language and Literature
Åbo Akademi University
Turku, Finland

Eric Prieto
Department of French and Italian
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Markku Salmela
English Language, Literature & Translation
University of Tampere
Tampere, Finland
The Literary Urban Studies Series has a thematic focus on literary media-
tions and representations of urban conditions. Its specific interest is in
developing interdisciplinary methodological approaches to the study of
literary cities. Echoing the Russian formalist interest in literaturnost or
literariness, Literary Urban Studies will emphasize the “citiness” of its
study object—the elements that are specific to the city and the urban con-
dition—and an awareness of what this brings to the source material and
what it implies in terms of methodological avenues of inquiry. The series’
focus allows for the inclusion of perspectives from related fields such as
urban history, urban planning, and cultural geography. The series sets no
restrictions on period, genre, medium, language, or region of the source
material. Interdisciplinary in approach and global in range, the series
actively commissions and solicits works that can speak to an international
and cross-disciplinary audience.
Editorial Board
Ulrike Zitzlsperger, University of Exeter, UK
Peta Mitchell, University of Queensland, Australia
Marc Brosseau, University of Ottawa, Canada
Andrew Thacker, De Montfort University, UK
Patrice Nganang, Stony Brook University, USA
Bart Keunen, University of Ghent, Belgium

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15888
 Maria Beville • Deirdre Flynn
Editors

Irish Urban Fictions

Editors
Maria Beville Deirdre Flynn
Centre for Studies in Otherness University College Dublin
Aarhus University, Denmark Dublin, Ireland

ISSN 2523-7888     ISSN 2523-7896 (electronic)

Literary Urban Studies
ISBN 978-3-319-98321-9    ISBN 978-3-319-98322-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98322-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951602

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: The quays at twilight in Dublin City, Ireland

Credit: David Soanes Photography / Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their
intellectual rigour, cordiality, and professionalism throughout the entire
process. Overall it has been an exciting project and has inspired new
research projects for many of us. It has been a pleasure working with such
an excellent team of scholars.
We would also like to thank those who were involved in peer reviewing
the work and offering invaluable insights at various stages from abstract to
completed manuscript.
Deirdre Flynn would like to thank her colleagues in the University
College Dublin (UCD) School of English, Drama, Creative Writing and
Film for their support and friendship.
Maria Beville would like to thank the team at the Centre for Studies in
Otherness for encouraging new ideas and promoting ongoing work on
literature and the urban.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction: Irish Urban Fictions   1

Maria Beville and Deirdre Flynn

Part I Whose City Is It Anyway? The City as Experience  21

2 Whose Dublin Is It Anyway? Joyce, Doyle, and the City  23

Eva Roa White

3 That Limerick Lady: Exploring the Relationship Between

Kate O’Brien and Her City  45
Margaret O’Neill

4 Migrants in the City: Dublin Through the Stranger’s Eyes

in Hugo Hamilton’s Hand in the Fire  63
Molly Ferguson

5 Phantasmal Belfast, Ancient Languages, Modern Aura in

Ciaran Carson’s The Star Factory  81
Tim Keane

vii
viii CONTENTS

Part II Disturbing Phantasies and the Uncanny City 107

6 ‘Neither This nor That’: The Decentred Textual City in

Ulysses 109
Quyen Nguyen

7 Urban Degeneracy and the Free State in Flann O’Brien’s

At Swim-Two-Birds 129
Laura Lovejoy

8 Putting the ‘Urban’ into ‘Disturbance’: Kevin Barry’s

City of Bohane and the Irish Urban Gothic 149
Martyn Colebrook

9 John Banville: The City as Illuminated Image 167

Neil Murphy

Part III Cities of Change: Re-writing the City 183

10 The Haunted Dublin of Ulysses: Two Modes of Time in

the Second City of the Empire 185
Nikhil Gupta

11 ‘It’s only history’: Belfast in Rosemary Jenkinson’s Short

Fiction 203
Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado

12 The City of the Farset: Portrayals of Belfast in Three

Novels by Glenn Patterson 225
Terry Phillips

Index 241
 Notes on Contributors

Maria Beville is a researcher, lecturer, and writer with the Centre for
Studies in Otherness. Her research interests include the Gothic, Irish
Studies, and urban literary studies. Working mostly with contemporary
fiction and film, her recent research has focused on the supernatural city in
literature. Her books include The Unnameable Monster in Literature and
Film (2013), The Gothic and the Everyday (coedited; 2014), and Gothic-
postmodernism (2009). She is editor of the journal Otherness: Essays and
Studies.
Martyn Colebrook completed his PhD in 2012 focusing on the novels
of Iain Banks. To date he has delivered over 100 conference papers in the
UK, Ireland, the USA, and Europe. He has published chapters focusing
on Don DeLillo, China Miéville, and Gordon Burn and contributed to
the Bloomsbury Decades Series on Contemporary Literature. He co-­
edited the first collection of scholarly essays on Ian Banks’ fiction and has
co-organised conferences on Michael Moorcock, 9/11 Narratives,
Millennial Fictions, Angela Carter, and Jeanette Winterson.
Molly Ferguson is an Assistant Professor of English at Ball State
University in Indiana, where she teaches courses in Postcolonial literatures
and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her primary research interest is in con-
temporary Irish literature and its intersections with gender studies, human
rights, austerity, and trauma theory. She has published articles in
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary
Journal, New Hibernia Review, Studi Irlandesi, The Canadian Journal of
Irish Studies, and Nordic Irish Studies.

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Deirdre Flynn is Assistant Professor of Irish Studies in the School of

English, Drama, Creative Writing and Film at University College Dublin.
Her research interests are in Contemporary and World Literature, Irish
Studies, Drama and Theatre, Urban Studies, Dystopian fiction, ageing,
and gender. She recently worked on a co-edited collection titled
Representations of Loss in Irish Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and
is currently working on a monograph on Haruki Murakami.
Nikhil Gupta is an Academic Standards Board Advisor at the University
of Michigan. His research looks at stories of empires that Irish and
American modernist writers rewrite and transpose from one side of the
Atlantic to the other in order to reimagine belonging in their own home-
lands. This transnational framework casts revision and its crucial role in the
modernist practice of artistic production as an intertextual process, one
which also places British imperialism alongside American expansion and
views them as parts of the same geopolitical process.
Tim Keane is an Associate Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan
Community College in the City University of New York. He specialises in
the intersection between the visual arts and literature in twentieth-­century
modernism, both European and American. He has published articles on
the writings of artist Ray Johnson and the composer and musician John
Cage, on painter George Schneeman’s collaborations with the ‘New York
School’ poets, and on painter and poet Joe Brainard’s memoirs.
Laura Lovejoy is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of English at
University College Cork. With funding from the Irish Research Council,
she is preparing a monograph, Modernism’s Red Lights: London, New York,
Dublin, Berlin, which explores modernist geographies of commercial sex.
Her work has been published in Humanities and the Journal of Working-­
Class Studies.
Neil Murphy is an Associate Professor of English at Nanyang
Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is the author of Irish
Fiction and Postmodern Doubt (2004) and editor of Aidan Higgins: The
Fragility of Form (2010). He co-edited (with Keith Hopper) a special
Flann O’Brien centenary issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction
(2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (2013) and a four-book
series related to the work of Dermot Healy, all with Dalkey Archive Press,
USA, including, most recently, Writing the Sky: Observations and Essays
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

on Dermot Healy (2016). His book on John Banville is published by

Bucknell University Press in 2018.
Quyen Nguyen has recently completed her PhD with the Division of
English at NTU, Singapore. Her research interests include James Joyce,
Irish literature, modernism, translation studies, and geocriticism. Her
PhD dissertation is entitled ‘City as Writing: Textual Dublin in Ulysses’.
Margaret O’Neill is a Gender Arc Project Coordinator at the University
of Limerick. In summer 2018, she visited NUI Galway as a Moore Institute
visiting fellow to develop a project on women, ageing, and life narratives.
Margaret has taught Irish literature at the University of Limerick and
Maynooth University. She researches in twentieth-century and con-
temporary Irish writing, gender theory, health humanities, and cul-
tural gerontology. Her co-edited collection Ageing Women in Literature
and Visual Culture: Reflections, Refractions, Reimaginings was published
by Palgrave in 2017.
Terry Phillips was the Dean of Arts and Humanities at Liverpool Hope
University until her retirement in 2010 and continues to chair the Irish
Studies Research Group. Her recent publications include Irish Literature
and the First World War (Peter Lang, 2015); ‘Out on a Great Adventure:
The Travels of Patrick MacGill’ in Travel in France and Ireland: Tourism,
Sport and Culture, eds Francis Healy and Brigitte Bastiat (Peter Lang,
2017); and ‘Our Dead Shall Not Have Died in Vain: The War Poetry of
Harry Midgley’ in Towards 2016: 1916 in Irish Literature, Culture and
Society’, eds Crosson and Huber (EFACIS, 2015).
Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado is an academic and a dual specialist in
Irish and Caribbean Studies. She is a co-editor of Female Lines: New
Writing by Women from Northern Ireland (New Island Books, 2017). She
is the author of Decoloniality and Gender in Jamaica Kincaid and Gisèle
Pineau: Connective Caribbean Readings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
Dawn has also published in Irish Studies Review, Breac, Callaloo, The
Sunday Business Post, Four Nations History, and Writing the Troubles. She
is a regular contributor to The Honest Ulsterman, the Dublin Review of
Books, and The Irish Times.
Eva Roa White is a Professor of English at Indiana University Kokomo,
USA. Her research focuses primarily on Irish and immigration studies. She
has authored a book, A Case Study of Ireland and Galicia’s Parallel Paths
xii Notes on Contributors

to Nationhood. Her articles about identity migration and hybrid cultural

and national identities in Irish, Galician, and South Asian Studies have
appeared in New Hibernia Review and South Asian Review and in the
essay collections Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland: The Immigrant
in Contemporary Irish Literature, The Wake of the Tiger, and (M)Othering
the Nation: Constructing and Resisting Regional and National Allegories
Through the Maternal Body.
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Irish Urban Fictions

Maria Beville and Deirdre Flynn

‘You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the
answer it gives to a question of yours … Or the question it asks you,
forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx’
(Italo Calvino—Le città invisibili)

The first UNESCO ‘Cities of Literature Conference’ was hosted in Dublin

in June 2016 presenting the Irish capital as a creative, literary city and
celebrating Ireland’s literary icons. Claiming that Dublin ‘has words in its
blood’, the project explored Ireland’s literary traditions across a range of
urban settings and continued work on the importance of literature to
Dublin which has been ongoing since the city was designated as a
UNESCO City of Literature in 2010.1 Literature is of great significance
not only to Dublin but to all Irish cities. Each of Ireland’s ten cities, both
north and south of the border, has its own recognisable literary heritage
which has evolved over time and through a variety of authors and literary

M. Beville (*)
Centre for Studies in Otherness, Aarhus University, Denmark
D. Flynn (*)
University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Beville, D. Flynn (eds.), Irish Urban Fictions, Literary Urban
Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98322-6_1
2 M. BEVILLE AND D. FLYNN

styles. Equally, the cities themselves have been and are important to Irish
literature and have inspired some of the country’s finest writing.
Joseph Valente has noted that ‘the urban experience has indeed been
comparatively underappreciated in studies of Irish literature’.2
Contemporary literary scholars such as Gerry Smyth have offered nuanced
and important readings of Dublin’s urban literary contexts and the wider
cultural significance of these. However, a broader examination of the
range of Irish literary cities has yet to be completed. By virtue of their
location on a small island on the periphery of Western Europe, Irish cities
offer a unique urban cultural experience distinct from that of frequently
fictionalised megacities such as London, Paris, and Tokyo. Understanding
the cultural, social, and political mosaic that comprises Irish cities, north
and south of the border, and the writing that they inspire, can open up
new perspectives, not just on Irish literature, but on the broader discourse
of ‘the global city’ and the city as a response to capitalist advancement and
economy in flux.3
Reflected in recent, but also in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-­
century Irish fictions, the topography of the Irish city4 is varied and com-
plex. According to Smyth, Joyce’s Dublin was a composite of the various
layers which had contributed to the emergence of the modern city up to
the late nineteenth century—Viking trading town, colonial buttress,
Georgian capital, industrial slum, and was also, in the words of Declan
Kiberd ‘a classic example of a periphery dominated centre’. Since then,
Smyth argues, the city has continued to exist as ‘a complex living entity
moving in time as well as in space’.5 Elaborating further, Smyth argues that
Dublin is not just a combination of physical and imagined environments,
it is a ‘word city’,6 and the words that create it and emerge from it engen-
der an urban narrative as fluid as the materiality of the city itself. Building
on Smyth’s approach to the constantly evolving ‘urban fabric’ of the city,
we extend analysis of the living city in Irish literature to include cities out-
side of Dublin which have not been subjected to in-depth critical study. In
these fictions, we find cities that are utopian or dystopian, and the city is
habitually a liminal psycho-geographical topos; a metaphysical space which
converges with the consciousness of the urbanite. Often, it is presented as
a hyper-realistic metropolitan locale, forming an important site for specific
social commentary on contemporary Irish culture and society.
Chris Jenks has commented that the city is ‘a magical place’, ‘but the
magic is not evenly distributed. So uneven is the experience of city life that
it would not be vexatious to describe the idea of an urban culture as
 INTRODUCTION: IRISH URBAN FICTIONS 3

­ xymoronic’.7 This view of the city as an impossible space is problematic,

o
and we counter this approach to the intense flux that the city presents by
also considering the material qualities of the urban experience. In light of
increased globalisation and connective technology, we cannot expect a
homogeneous experience of the city; in fact Mark Gottdiener and Leslie
Budd suggest the global city has become de-centred as a result of globali-
sation: ‘[t]he new information economy, with its accelerating use of all
types of electronic telecommunications, possesses counter tendencies of
de-centralisation as well as supporting the growth of new centres, includ-
ing multi-cantered regional growth’.8 Regional growth here in Ireland has
encouraged the development of smaller cities and larger towns outside of
the capital, each with their own unique, and culturally, globally, and eco-
nomically responsive centres. These cities present the potential for new
understandings of not only Irish urban experience but also global urban
experience.
In the fictions of Kate O’Brien and Kevin Barry, we move beyond
Dublin to encounter representations of cities on the western sea-board that
respond to both global and local actualities. Huge cultural, political, eco-
nomic, and colonial changes over the past 100 years have impacted how
the city is experienced and as a result how it develops and evolves. Belfast,
for example, is what Caroline Magennis calls a city in ‘transition’, ‘haunted
by violence’.9 The economic boom of the Celtic Tiger also had a major
impact on the topography of Ireland, urban and rural. The visual remind-
ers of the subsequent crash remain as tens of thousands of houses still sit
abandoned in ghost estates across the country. As Smyth notes, the house
building boom during the first decade of the 21st Century ‘led to an
extreme distortion of established life and work practices’.10 People could
no longer afford to live in Dublin and commuted from towns and cities
across the country, creating new urban centres, commuter towns, and a
new ethno-geography. The Celtic Tiger and its aftermath had a major
impact on traditional notions of ‘Irish national identity that obtained dur-
ing the modern era suffered an extreme assault during the closing decades
of the twentieth century and continuing on down to the present day’.11
While the changing nature of the Irish city has drawn strong creative
impulse and literary response, critical attention has been drawn, in the main,
to the connotations that link notions of Irish fiction to the regional and the
rural. Arguably, the Irish cultural revival at the beginning of the twentieth
century and nationalist legacies leading into the 1980s reinforced t­raditional
values relating to Irish identity as cognate with rural experience. These values
4 M. BEVILLE AND D. FLYNN

have resonated intensely through the range of fictions that have come to
represent Irish writing since its modernist heyday. Literary greats such as
John McGahern, John B. Keane, and Edna O’Brien produced some of the
most unforgettable renderings of rural Catholic Ireland and these have
echoed through depictions of Irish literature in English by Irish, British, and
American authors alike. Oona Frawley discusses this point in her book Irish
Pastoral, noting that Yeats and Synge and others involved in the revival
often relied on ‘sophisticated urban concepts of nature […] that allowed
them to engage in idealisations that led to the construction of the idea of the
Irish nation as rural, traditional’.12 Significantly, these constructions were
tied to issues over land tenure, and the political agendas of nationalism thus
became bound to the city as a site at odds with romantic notions of Irishness.
While Synge and other revivalists were aware of this growing dichotomy and
worked to disable ‘the urban/rural binary current at the time’, in particular
pointing to the commonality of suffering in rural and urban Ireland and the
importance of the shift of nationalist agitation from rural to urban settings
at the turn of the twentieth century,13 Dublin continued to be rendered a
zone of moral degeneracy in the broader cultural imagination and was long
associated with Imperialist capitalism. Catholic anxieties about the threat
posed by the capital to national purity and homogeneity are explored by
experimental Irish city writers such as Flann O’Brien, who as Laura Lovejoy
demonstrates in Chap. 7, begins to dismantle the contrived relationship
between Irish identity, Catholicism, and the rural, expanding on the com-
plexities of Dublin life which opened up more fluid concepts of urban life
and Irishness.

‘Multipli-cities’
Our purpose in this book is to address the city in Irish fiction as a fluid
and multiple space that expands traditional notions of Irish identity as
rural and challenges the view that cities are homogenous or singular. All
of the chapters in this collection are guided by the common objective of
re-­evaluating the significance of the urban to Irish experience and explor-
ing how the city speaks to the rapidly changing nature of Irish identity
which, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, consistently responds
to large-­scale social, cultural, and economic shifts. The chapters form a
cohesive perspective that aligns with postmodern critical approaches to
cultural identity, agreeing with Jean-François Lyotard that ‘eclecticism is
the degree zero of contemporary general culture’,14 and thereby we
 INTRODUCTION: IRISH URBAN FICTIONS 5

address the diverse range of representations of the urban that are evident
in Irish fiction. Our method allows for the deconstruction of the multiple
layers of the ever-changing city and for cultural critique of subjective and
plural experiences in urban time-space which results in what Michael
Peter Smith calls ‘a better purchase on the politics of personal and ethnic
identity under our present globalized conditions of existence’.15 As such,
we view the cities of Irish fiction as multipli-cities, evolved through the
swathes of change that have affected Irish identity since the turn of the
twentieth century, impacting how we see our ‘selves’ as a nation, north
and south of the border. From this point, we consider how Dublin and
other Irish cities exist for the many who call them home through the
kaleidoscopic literary lenses offered by literary fiction.
As such, our perspective on the Irish literary city tallies with the
Benjaminian idea of urban phantasmagoria. While acknowledging the
peculiarities of the Irish city architecturally—being less a city of glass than
a palimpsest of history and economy—we align ourselves with Benjamin’s
view of the city as a spectacle of shifting images to provide an account of
representation of the urban in Irish fiction. This view is particularly fitting
in contemporary texts which examine the post-Celtic Tiger economy and
its impact on the Irish urban experience more broadly. In the work of
Kevin Barry, for example, we encounter a city that is fluid and shape-­
shifting, both grotesque and fascinating—a dystopian response to societal
collapse and crime and pollution resulting from excessive urbanisation.
Beyond Dublin and Limerick, we also offer examinations of ‘post’-con-
flict Belfast and its frequent re-imaginings in relation to globalised and
‘new Irish’ identities. Our strategy is to analyse a spectrum of Irish urban
contexts as depicted in Irish fiction. The range of diverse analyses of city
fictions is to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the city in Irish fic-
tion, and Irish fiction in the city. Through theoretically and contextually
informed close readings of selected Irish urban fictions, we examine how
the Irish city is constructed as a plural space to mirror the plurality of con-
temporary Irish identities north and south under three distinct, but com-
plementary, strands.
This collection is structured, not chronologically or by region. Instead,
it is shaped around interrelated and complementary thematic principles
which encourage lateral reading across the collection as a whole, inviting
those who engage with the research to make connections across the range
of studies, and to participate in a new discourse and understanding of
Irish urban fictions. The three sections of the book each follow a distinct
6 M. BEVILLE AND D. FLYNN

but related thematic approach; the sections speak to each other, but also
to a particular feature of the concept of the ‘living city’. The first, which
explores the city as experience, considers the interiority of the city and the
relationship between city and subject, to discuss ‘belonging’ in the city
and the intersections of identity construction for the Irish urbanite. The
second approach examines the imagined city and the frequent queer and
uncanny depictions of the city that can be found in dystopian, fantastic,
and postmodern urban fictions. The final approach is directed toward
the notion of the city in flux and plural narratives of the city. Exploring
how the city is written, not only in literature but from the perspective of
each individual city dweller, the chapters which take these approaches to
the city collectively generate a discourse of the Irish city in fiction as
‘multipli-city’.

Joyce’s Dublin and New Imaginings

Frawley suggests that Joyce’s Dublin ‘represents an obvious point of
departure within the Irish literary tradition that wrote so overwhelmingly
of the rural’.16 While this is certainly true, over-emphasising the point
could lead one to overlook key urban writers such as Bram Stoker and
Sheridan Le Fanu before him, who chronicled ‘old Dublin city’, its castle,
its landmarks, and its shady winding streets, in works like The Cock and
Anchor (1845). In many ways Le Fanu established Dublin as a literary
Gothic city, and this character has remained important to the capital’s
urban reputation today, drawing tourists to take part in ghost tours and
literary walks of so-called haunted locations. But late Victorian Dublin in
fiction was more than its uncanny hauntings, as demonstrated in Somerville
and Ross’s ‘startling socio-political reconstruction of late-Victorian
Dublin’, which, in The Real Charlotte, formulates the city as a romantic
city of loss for the young protagonist Francie Fitzpatrick.17
However, Joyce’s rendering of the Irish capital marks an important
juncture in the literary envisioning of the urban. As an intensification of
the theme of the city of loss, it becomes a city of paralysis, as Liam Lanigan
puts it. Not only this, it is contextualised by Joyce in relation to the wider
European, and indeed global, contexts to which it related, culturally and
economically at that time. According to Lanigan, ‘it is assumed that Paris
is viewed as a glamorous European capital and a centre of global culture,
while Dublin is regarded as a backwater in which the force of Joyce’s
 INTRODUCTION: IRISH URBAN FICTIONS 7

intellect could not be contained, and could never be fully developed18’.

This may be the case and it has certainly impacted our view of the exiled
artist. However, it also had further interesting repercussions as Desmond
Harding points out: ‘Joyce’s internationalist vision of Dublin generates
powerful epistemic and cultural tropes that reconceive the idea of the
modern city as a moral phenomenon in transcultural and trans-historical
terms.19
Joyce’s globalisation of Dublin, combined with his simultaneous shift
toward the interiority of the Dubliner, radically altered the way that
Ireland and the Irish city could be imagined in literature. This cannot be
underestimated, and the significance of this innovation for twentieth-
and twenty-first-century Irish fictions has informed not only the motiva-
tion behind this book but its structure and design. As such, new analyses
of Joyce’s Dublin have been the ideal place to begin each of the three
sections in this book. Three essays which revise traditional readings of
Joyce’s urban fiction introduce and situate the thematic direction of the
critical discourse in each section and the overall commentary of the vol-
ume as it moves from discussing the city as experience, to the city as
imaginary, and finally to city as amorphous and plural. As part of our
methodology, we deliberately look back at that most iconic version of
Irish urban identity, Joyce’s Dublin, to explore how this literary city tran-
scends its original modernist contexts and speaks to the construction of
real and fictional representations of the Irish city in literary and cultural
terms. Exploring the legacies of Joyce’s urban imaginary, and equally,
literary departures from his textualised city of words, allows us to con-
tribute to a more complete picture of modern Irish literature and Irish
urban cultural experience.
Dublin, fictionally and physically mapped in Ulysses and Dubliners, is an
important counterpoint to literary imaginings of Ireland as a rural nation.
Joyce, referred to by Seamus Deane as ‘the first and greatest of Irish urban
writers’,20 created a vision of the Irish city which cast a long literary shadow
over twentieth-century urban fiction. Generating a vast amount of literary
criticism as well as theoretical re-readings and creative re-writings, Joyce’s
Dublin has become a city much cherished in the Irish imagination. Alternate
Irish urban narratives have somehow not warranted the same depth of
scholarly interest, and while a prolific body of criticism exists on Dublin in
Joyce’s work, we are still left with a lack of understanding of what the city
really means to Irish literature as a modern cultural phenomenon.
8 M. BEVILLE AND D. FLYNN

New Directions in Irish Urban Literary Studies

While there has been some important research undertaken on the city in
relation to specific Irish authors such as Joyce and Beckett, relatively little
work has been done on the city as an Irish literary trope, or to examine its
significance to Irish writing more broadly. Choosing to focus on the genre
of fiction, this is the first book to address both the city in Irish literature
and the Irish city in literature. Our work opens new avenues for research
in Irish literary studies and builds on existing research that includes broad-­
spectrum studies of urban writing. In such studies, including Tom
Herron’s Irish Writing London, although the focus is elsewhere, impor-
tant references are made to the Irish city, most prominently, Dublin, and
to the Irish diaspora experience of cities such as London, Paris, and
New York. Deaglán Ó Donghaile’s essay, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Other London’,21
is just one such example from Herron’s book, examining the impact of
urban experience on Wilde’s writing.
Critical writing on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish
fiction has also drawn upon the importance of the urban/rural urban
divide as Michael Begnal demonstrates in his fascinating essay on the city
of Galway in Finnegan’s Wake22 and as discussed in the 2012 ‘Reimagining
Ireland Series’ by Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Carmen Zamorano Llena.
This edited collection is notable for examining how the urban/rural divide
has been represented in literature since the end of the nineteenth century
with focus on the Celtic Tiger as a transformative event on the Irish cul-
tural landscape.
Our work in this volume is also informed by the ongoing research of
Irish studies scholars who have been exploring issues relevant to Irish
urban fiction. Echoing Seamus Deane’s ever-popular A Short History of
Irish Literature, which retains a strong focus on Ireland’s Catholic and
colonial/neo-colonial cultural contexts, Aaron Kelly’s Twentieth-Century
Irish Literature, published in 2008, surveys the literary landscape of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Ireland, dealing with some
of the authors that are a focus in this collection. As a seminal text on Irish
literature, it is worth noting that Kelly’s study also gives little attention to
the city beyond the scope of Joyce and his iconic fictionalisation of Dublin.
Kelly, like many other scholars of modern Irish literature, addresses the
dominant issues of nationhood, Catholicism, gender, sexuality, and the
impact of postmodernism on Irish writing. In his study, however, the
urban setting of many of the works studied remains a subtext to the main
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 ACUTE CONGESTION OF THE KIDNEYS IN
SWINE.

Causes: infection, toxins, fermented food, traumas, crowding, cold. Symptoms:

stiff loins and quarters, frequent micturition, urine limpid or red. Treatment.

Renal congestion in pigs has been seen mainly as the result of

toxin poisoning in swine erysipelas, hog cholera or caseous
pneumonia. It is also liable to occur from putrid or overfermented
food, and in fat, heavy animals from injuries sustained in shipping by
rail by trampling on or squeezing each other. Kicks and other injuries
may at times contribute to its occurrence. Exposure to cold storms,
to which swine are especially sensitive, a wet, cold bed, or a leaky
roof, are additional causes.
The symptoms are more or less stiffness of the loins and hind
parts, frequent urination, the secretion being often passed in excess,
and though at times clear yet at others pink or bloody and
precipitating blood clots or at least containing blood globules.
Treatment is mainly prophylactic. If therapeutic measures are
desirable for valuable animals, they should follow the same lines as
for sheep: rest, fomentations, aqueous food, anodynes, weak alkaline
diuretics, laxatives, and balsams.
 CONGESTION OF THE KIDNEYS IN CARNIVORA.

Causes: acrid diuretics, loss of kidney, catheterization, dermatitis, burns,

traumas, overexertion. Lesions: enlarged, blood-gorged kidney, red or black,
petechiated. Symptoms: stiff, arched, tender loins, tardy, dragging of hind limbs,
urine passed often, clear to bloody, albuminous, anorexia, nausea, vomiting,
diarrhœa, dullness, stupor. Treatment: stop cause, give emetic, laxative, in surgical
cases antiseptic, for cantharides, camphor, bromides, vegetable food. Warm
clothing or building.

Causes. This comes most commonly from the ingestion of acrid or

diuretic agents, saltpeter, turpentine oil, cantharides and, according
to Cadeac, various essential oils including oil of mustard. It takes
place in the remaining kidney after the one has been extirpated, or
had its functions abolished by disease or urethral obstruction. Again,
surgical operations on the urinary organs, even the simple passing of
a catheter, will cause sympathetic renal congestion. Extensive acute
dermatitis, and burns of the skin may have a similar sequence.
Falls, kicks, blows, or crushing beneath a wheel or otherwise are
additional causes.
Finally violent overexertion as in coursing, causes congestion with
albuminuria, and blood globules and even casts in the urine. This is
common to the human athlete, who undergoes a violent and
continued overexertion, race and draught horses, and dogs.
Lesions. When congestion is produced experimentally by
cantharides the kidneys are found to be enlarged and the cortex
gorged with blood so that it has a deep red or blackish port wine hue,
with here and there spots of ecchymosis. The veins, capillaries and
glomeruli are especially congested, and the epithelial cells of the
convoluted tubes have become laterally distended, so that they
approximate to a globular form. A loose coagulum containing blood
globules may be found in the capsule of the glomerulus and in the
convoluted tubes.
Symptoms. These are arching and stiffness of the loins, a tardy,
dragging movement of the hind limbs and tenderness of the loins.
The urine may be scanty or in excess, and tends to be passed
frequently, in small quantities and with evidence of pain. It may be
clear, pinkish or bloody, and shows albumen and frequently casts,
and blood globules or small clots. There is some impairment of
appetite, and, in severe cases, nausea and vomiting, with, it may be,
diarrhœa, nervous depression, dullness and stupor. When due to
poison or other transient cause the symptoms improve when this
factor has been stopped.
Treatment. When due to poison taken by the stomach this must be
stopped, and the stomach and bowels evacuated by an emetic
(ipecacuan) and laxative (sodium sulphate). Appropriate treatment
must be made in case of burns or skin eruptions. When surgical cases
are due to infection rather than simple shock or sympathetic
irritation, antiseptic injections of the bladder are indicated. In all
cases alike a warm bath is an important adjunct. When irritation is
due to cantharides, it may be calmed by camphor, 2 grains every
three or four hours. Other anodynes may be given as required. Rest
is essential and, as appetite is recovered, a moderate amount of
amylaceous puddings. A warm building or comfortable clothing is
desirable.
 NEPHRITIS.

The renal inflammations have not been fully investigated in the

domestic animals, and even in man, the pathology of several of the
forms is still enveloped in some measure of doubt. In man the
following conditions have been noted:
1st. Acute parenchymatous nephritis with enlarged kidney and
degenerated tubules.
2d. Chronic parenchymatous nephritis with enlarged kidney and
degenerated tubules.
3d. Acute diffuse (desquamative, interstitial) nephritis with
enlarged kidney and glomeruli, tubules and connective tissue
degenerated.
4th. Chronic diffuse (desquamation, interstitial) nephritis.
5th. Suppurative nephritis and pyelo-nephritis, infection may be
from injury.
6th. Perinephritis: infection of connective tissue with adjacent
disease.
In domestic animals the following distinctions have been made:
1st. Acute nephritis.
2d. Chronic nephritis.
3d. Purulent nephritis and pyelo-nephritis.
4th. Perinephritis.
 ACUTE NEPHRITIS. ACUTE BRIGHT’S DISEASE.

Animals affected. Causes: hyperæmia, traumas, cold, chill, fever, bacteria,

toxins, overfeeding, nitrogenous food, raw potatoes, xanthin products, acrid
diuretics, diuretic insects, suppression of micturition, skin lesions, burns,
embolism, calculus. Symptoms: colic, trembling, rigor, arched, stiff, tender loins,
stiffness in quarters, drags hind legs, urination frequent, movements of penis and
testicle, costiveness, grinding teeth, anorexia, vomiting (in dogs, cats and pigs),
fever, dropsies, uræmic convulsions, urine scanty, high colored, red or bloody,
thin, cloudy or turbid, albuminous, purulent, oxalates, urates, hippurates,
hæmatoidin, epithelium, mucus, casts. Prognosis: resolution in three days, or
uræmia, suppuration, degenerations. Lesions: kidney enlarged, softened, friable,
red, yellow, black, purulent, glomerulitis, tubular nephritis, interstitial nephritis.
Treatment: rest, warm building, warm clothing, green or sloppy, amylaceous food,
bleeding, cupping, skin friction, fomentations, warm bath, hot air bath, sinapisms,
anodynes, laxatives, diaphoretics, heart tonics, alkaline diuretics, paracentesis,
bitters, iron, phosphates, hydrogen peroxide, cubebs, etc.

Genera affected. This has been seen in horse, ox, dog, sheep and
pig.
Causes. It is ascribed to the most varied causes, such as:
hyperæmia, blows and injuries on the back and loins, sprains of the
loins, abrupt wheeling when in galop, exposure to cold winds, and
storms, especially when perspiring and fatigued, sudden suppression
of perspiration, extreme terror, bacterial infection and infection by
toxins (in septicæmia, pyæmia, influenza, contagious pneumonia,
uterine sepsis, omphalitis, infectious angina (Friedberger),
bronchitis (Siedamgrotzky), glanders, tuberculosis). Among dietary
causes are named: a rich nitrogenous food (grains, beans, peas,
vetches, cotton seed, clover), raw potatoes in excess, cotton seed
meal, agents that increase the nitrogenous and xanthin bodies in the
urine.
 Dr. Alfred C. Croftan, in his experiments with xanthin bodies on
rabbits, found that xanthin and hypoxanthin produced great increase
of arterial pressure, atheromatous changes in the vessel walls
consisting in thickening of the intima, with small celled infiltration
and necrotic changes in different areas of the vessel walls. This in the
kidney produces the primary interstitial form of nephritis known as
gouty kidney and associated with retention of uric acid and other
xanthin bodies. The accompanying cardiac hypertrophy, so common
with such kidneys, he attributes to the increased intravascular
pressure.
Irritant vegetables that are resinous or diuretic, and irritant
diuretic insects are incriminated (cantharides, caterpillars in grass,
or on plants, etc., lice on cabbages particularly,—Cruzel, Neubert).
Irritant drugs that are eliminated by the kidneys have been equally
charged (tar, carbolic acid, iodoform, chlorate of potash, nitrate of
potash, phosphorus, arsenic, lead, mercury). Compulsory
suppression of micturition is undoubtedly injurious in house dogs
shut up, mares kept long in harness, or horse on railway car, above
all if this follows a diuretic or drinking abundantly. In such cases it is
altogether probable that bacteria already exist in the blood or
kidneys and take occasion to attack the tissues weakened by the
overdistension or other inimical cause. This is all the more probable
seeing that the kidneys are a favorite channel for the elimination of
bacteria present in the system. It should be noted that nephritis is
liable to supervene on extensive skin burns, chronic dermatitis and
other skin diseases. Some cases are traceable to embolism, the clots
coming from the lungs, heart or arteries, in others the irritation is
due to calculi in the renal pelvis or tubules, and their attendant
bacteria. These are especially common in cattle that are winter fed on
dry food. Again, the infection may have travelled forward through
the ureters from a pre-existing infective cystitis.
Symptoms. There may be obscure or intense colic; trembling or
rigor may occur, yet is often omitted or unobserved; the loins are
arched; the hind feet are advanced under the belly, or there is
frequent shifting of the weight from one foot to the other; the walk
shows stiffness of the back and hind limbs which appear to straddle
or drag behind; urination is frequent in small amount, or there are
frequent ineffectual attempts to urinate; the patient is indisposed to
lie down, and if he does so it is carefully, with difficulty and
groaning; the testicles are drawn up and dropped alternately, the
penis is often protruded from and retracted within its sheath, the
loins are sensitive to pinching, percussion, or electric current; when
mounted the animal drops under the weight; he carries the head low
and refuses to go fast. In bad cases there is constipation, grinding of
teeth, anorexia, and in dogs, vomiting. Temperature may be normal
or there may be considerable fever. Dogs may lie curled up, with
occasional tremors. Dropsical effusions are frequent in the form of
anasarca under the chest or abdomen, or beneath the lower jaw, or
as stocking of the limbs, or the effusion may occur into an internal
serous cavity. Convulsions may occur from brain poisoning by urea
or other retained urinary product.
In the slighter forms the severe symptoms may be absent, and the
condition of the urine must be investigated as affording the most
constant and characteristic phenomena.
The urine is usually scanty, high colored, of a high specific gravity
and is passed often with pain and groaning. At the outset of an acute
attack it may be bloody; later it may be only cloudy or turbid from
the excess of epithelial and pus cells, leucocytes, salts and albumen.
Early in the disease the casts may contain red blood cells, and renal
epithelium, later leucocytes, nuclei, granules, pus cells, crystals and
other matters. Albumen is usually abundant as demonstrated by
boiling and nitric acid.
Soda carbonate crystals, rhomboid, rosette-shaped or spherical
and effervescing with acetic acid, abundant in normal herbivorous
urine may be greatly reduced or absent in nephritis.
Soda oxalate crystals, tetrahedral and insoluble in acetic acid,
and normal in herbivora and carnivora, are increased if the urine is
acid as in severe nephritis, but also in rheumatism, tetanus,
septicæmia, angina, heaves, and other affections with defective
æration of the blood.
Ammonio-magnesian phosphate crystals, rhomboid but
insoluble in acetic acid, are found in alkaline (ammoniacal) or
neutral urine, and appear to be often due to intestinal fermentations.
Cystine crystals, flat hexagonal plates, precipitated in healthy
urine, but dissolved by ammonia are absent in retained and
fermented specimens.
Uric acid crystals, rhomboids and plaques, brick red, and
normal in the urine of carnivora and flesh-fed omnivora, may be
present in herbivora not only in acute nephritis, but in other
extensive inflammations attended with anorexia and the
consumption of the animal tissues.
Hippuric acid crystals, right rhombic prisms and their
derivatives, and insoluble in hydrochloric acid or ether, are greatly
increased in all febrile diseases in herbivora, nephritis included.
Hæmatoidin crystals, fine needles or bundles of the same,
yellowish red, are found in nephritis, hæmaturia, heaves, etc.
Epithelium, if columnar, points to disease of the kidney tubes,
though very similar cells are derived from the urethra in both male
and female. Squamous epithelium points to the cystic mucosa and is
not increased in nephritis.
Mucus in cylindroid form may point to nephritic congestion or
inflammation, but this may be present in health, and may show in
irregular masses derived from the renal pelvis or the bladder.
Mucous casts are always extremely elastic and mobile, and lack the
even clear cut margins of the casts of nephritis. They are much more
common in horses urine than in that of other animals.
Tube casts are especially indicative of nephritis and exudation
into the uriniferous tubes. They are much firmer than the mucous
cylinders and have smoother and more even margins. If relatively
thick and straight they probably come from the straight tubes; if
sinuous or twisted, from the convoluted tubes. With a similar basis
substance they often enclose different solid bodies and have been
named accordingly:—epithelial casts when containing cylindroid,
or polyhedral cells may be unhesitatingly referred to the uriniferous
tubules:—granular casts in which the homogeneous cast is
impregnated with granular cells and free granules of proteid, fatty, or
mineral matter, point directly to inflammation affecting the
uriniferous tubules and their epithelial lining:—blood casts
enclosing red blood globules imply hemorrhage, or congestion or
inflammation of the tubules, with blood extravasation or diapedesis:
—casts containing leucocytes and pus cells bespeak
suppurative inflammation of the tubules:—calcareous casts
entangle numerous crystals and granules, mainly of lime carbonate,
and effervesce with acetic acid:—hyaline casts are homogeneous,
clear, so transparent that it is sometimes necessary to stain them
with iodine or aniline to make them distinct; they are found in
nephritis and especially in the chronic forms:—colloid casts or
waxy casts, or amyloid casts may designate a class of firmer
cylinders, clear, homogeneous and refractive, and often bearing fatty
or blood globules, crystals or fungi. They may have a yellow color, or
they may give the amyloid mahogany reaction with the iodo-potassic
iodide solution (even in the absence of amyloid degeneration of the
kidney; Jaksch).
Progress. Acute nephritis may advance for three days or more and
then terminate in resolution, or go on to complete anuria with coma,
to suppuration, gangrene or chronic nephritis.
Resolution is marked by general improvement of pulse,
breathing and expression, clearing of the urine, and return of
appetite. The urine may remain albuminous for eight days longer.
Complete suppression of urine has persisted five days in
cattle (Funk), and seven days in horses (Friedberger), accompanied
by intense fever, dullness, stupor and coma ending in death from
uræmia.
Purulent urine is white, milky, albuminous, granular, with
epithelial cells and casts and pus cells, showing their double nuclei
with acetic acid. There are usually rigor, hyperthermia (106° F.),
thirst, intermittent colics, diarrhœa, perspiration, uncertain walk,
and stocked legs. Convulsions have been noticed in the horse (Didie),
cow (Pflug) and bitch (Trasbot). The horse may turn in a circle
(Friedberger) or have amaurosis (Didie). Death usually occurs in two
weeks.
Gangrene is likely to prove fatal. Berger has seen death occur in
three days in the horse, and Trasbot in four days in a cow, after a
large cantharides blister.
Pathological Anatomy. The kidney is enlarged, soft, friable, dark
red, yellow with red spots, or having areas of hemorrhage. When
fatty it is marbled, pale yellow or white and red. The capsule is easily
detached. On section it is bloody, oozing or even dropping blood, or a
pale creamy fluid. The pelvis contains urine, thick, gelatinoid, bloody
or purulent. The latter condition must not be confounded with the
thick pus-like mucus which normally occupies the renal pelvis in the
horse.
The lesions of the secreting portions of the kidney will vary with
the concentration of the inflammation in one or other of the separate
tissues.
In glomerulitis from toxic irritants, the capsules enclose an
albuminous liquid exudate, the capillaries are overdistended, their
walls thickened and cloudy, and thrombi with an excess of red
globules and leucocytes block them at intervals. This capillary
obstruction extends to the plexus surrounding the convoluted
tubules.
In tubular nephritis there is congestion of the plexus covering
the convoluted tubes, and the epithelium shows cloudy swelling, with
fatty granules and hyalin droplets in the desquamating cells.
With interstitial nephritis there is an exudate into the
interstitial connective tissue between the tubules, and into the
tubules, forming hyalin casts. The epithelium of the tubules are
swollen, granular, opaque and desquamating.
In suppurative nephritis may be found all stages of abcedation
from minute points, gray or yellow, and only just visible to the naked
eye, in the midst of the deep red congested tissues, through the larger
white suppurative areas, to the extensive abscess formed by a
coalescence of the many, the intervening tissue having broken down
by a necrotic disintegration. In the earlier stages the pus infiltrates
the parenchyma so that it may be comparable to a sponge filled with
this liquid.
Treatment. The first consideration is rest, with a warm building or
clothing to solicit the action of the skin and lessen the work of the
kidneys. Warm summer weather is favorable, or we should secure a
sunny, comfortable, loose box, or a building heated by a stove. In
default of this, warm woolen blankets, hood and leg bandages should
be secured. If the case is mild enough to allow of appetite, the food
for herbivora may be green food in summer and carrots, beet, turnip,
potato or ensilage in winter. The dog may have buttermilk or sweet
milk or mush and milk. Meat is objectionable because of the amount
of urea and other urinary products which it produces.
 Trasbot strongly recommends general bleeding in strong, vigorous
horses and cattle, attacked by the disease in an acute form, but
deprecates it in the lymphatic, fat, or debilitated.
Omitting the general bleeding, one can always find a good and safe
alternative in bleeding the animal into his own tissues. Shaving the
loins and cupping has often an excellent effect. An approach to this
may be had by vigorous rubbing by several men at once, of the limbs
and the whole surface of the body, by warm fomentations over the
loins by means of spongio-piline or surgeon’s cotton covered with
dry blankets, or by winding a hose round the body through which
warm water is forced, or finally by a bath of steam or hot air, or in
small animals of warm water. The dog may be placed in a bath of 80°
or 90° F., which is allowed to gradually cool to 65° or 70°. In all these
cases the greatest care must be taken to avoid chill when the animal
is taken out. He should be quickly rubbed dry in a warm room and
blanketed.
Counter-irritants act in the same way, and mustard or hot water
hotter than the hands can bear may be applied. Turpentine,
cantharides and other diuretic counter-irritants must be carefully
avoided. An old practice of laying a freshly removed sheep skin over
the loins, with the flesh side inward, often causes a distinct
exudation, thickening of the skin and derivation.
A damp cloth, laid across the loins and thoroughly covered with
dry to prevent any evaporation and chill, will usually give great relief
and may be kept on for days.
Internal medication must at first be mainly anodyne, laxative and
diaphoretic. The two latter classes are at once derivative and
eliminating, carrying out through other channels, waste products
that would otherwise have taxed the kidneys.
Among anodynes, the bromide of camphor (horse, 1–2 drs., dog, 2
to 5 grs.), bromide of potassium (horse, 1 dr., dog, 1 to 3 grs.), or
hyoscyamus may be used, and repeated twice daily.
Purgatives must be restricted to such as have no tendency to act on
or irritate the kidneys. Castor oil, or sweet oil for the larger animals,
or for the dog senna or jalap, may be given every morning to secure
free movement.
 As diaphoretics, ipecacuanha, Dover’s powder, tartar emetic, and
even pilocarpin may be used. The last named agent is especially
useful when dropsy sets in, or uræmic stupor or coma threatens
(horse 3 grs., ox 7 grs., dog ½ to ⅓ gr. according to size). If the heart
shows weakness it must be sustained by digitalis, strophanthus,
caffein or nitro-glycerine, and the pilocarpin withheld.
In a sufficiently strong subject the stupor or coma may be met by
the abstraction of blood, which benefits by the dilution of that which
is left.
Eclampsia may be further met by the inhalation of ether or
chloroform, or the rectal injection of chloral or bromide solution.
As the inflammation abates, if the action of the kidney is still
insufficient in spite of the free drinking of pure water, alkaline
diuretics may be given in small doses (tartrate, acetate or citrate of
potash, bicarbonate of soda, saltpeter).
In excessive dropsy avoid sloughing by lancing the most tensely
swollen parts to allow drainage, and keep the parts disinfected with
carbolic or other antiseptic lotion. For ascites or hydrothorax,
aspirate, and apply a compressory bandage.
During convalescence a course of bitters (cinchona, salicin,
gentian, nux vomica) and iron (phospho-tartar, iodide or phosphate)
will often be called for. Anæmia may be met by doses of peroxide of
hydrogen or the inhalation of oxygen.
In the advanced stages benefit may accrue from the use of small
doses of cubebs, copiaba, oil of turpentine or buchu, which have a
tonic action on the renal mucosa.
 PURULENT NEPHRITIS.

Causes: general, traumatic, metastatic, infective, wounds, shocks, strains, blows,

falls, crowding, heavy loads, calculi, infective embolism. Lesions: miliary or large
abscesses, diffuse suppuration, softening, disintegration, fistula. Symptoms:
obscure, nephritic symptoms following distant abscess, chill, hyperthermia,
general symptoms of nephritis, pus in urine, anæmia, emaciation. Treatment: to
external wound, antiseptics, evacuate abscess, extirpate kidney with pyonephrosis,
in dog or pig, calcium sulphide, sulphites, copiaba.

Causes. Aside from the main causes of nephritis, the suppurative

form may be determined by traumatic or metastatic infective
conditions. Under traumatic factors may be named punctured or
gunshot wounds, shocks and strains connected with falls, blows,
crowding, compression, too heavy weights on the back (pack, rider,
two wheeled cart loaded too heavily forward and going down hill),
and finally calculi in the uriniferous tubules. Under metastatic
factors come all infections, pyæmia, omphalitis, any suppurative
affection of the lungs, (abscess, pneumonia, broncho-pneumonia),
pharyngitis, etc. Embolic renal abscess may start from endocarditis,
arteritis, or pulmonary phlebitis.
Lesions. There may be a circumscribed renal abscess like a good
large orange, or many small gray spots like millet seeds, peas or hazel
nuts, having purulent centres and containing pus cocci or bacilli. In
other cases a diffuse inflammation suppurates throughout till the
whole gland becomes a pulpy mass of pus, blood and broken down
kidney tissue (pyonephrosis). In traumatic cases the pus centres
around the wound or injury, perhaps invading adjacent parts, and
even communicating through the skin externally along the line of the
original wound. The pus may burrow in different directions in the
cortex or under the capsule with abscess at intervals (perinephritis),
or along the vessels to the medullary structure.
 Symptoms. These are often obscure. The sudden appearance of
kidney disease in the course of a suppurative affection elsewhere, the
extension being ushered in by a chill or rigor or attended by a
succession of these, and the course marked by a variable
hyperthermia is very suggestive. Stiffness and weakness of the hind
parts and tenderness of the loins are significant; also, in carnivora
and omnivora, nausea and vomiting. When the kidney can be felt by
the hand in the rectum or in the small animals, through the flaccid
abdominal walls, the manifest enlargement, the tenderness, and in
some cases even fluctuation will assist in diagnosis. In such cases,
puncture by a large hypodermic needle, or a small trochar may
betray the presence of pus and complete the diagnosis. If the pus
escapes into the pelvis of the kidney it may be recognized in the
urine. The case is very liable to become chronic, and is then marked
by anæmia and emaciation.
Treatment. When an external wound exists it must be treated,
antiseptically, with boric acid, potassium permanganate, or other
antiseptic lotion. If a single large abscess exists, puncture evacuation
through needle or trochar, and washing out with an antiseptic
solution is the obvious resort. Any foreign body must of course be
removed. If the suppuration is diffused through the whole mass of
softened kidney, the resort of extirpation may be considered. This is
always dangerous as provocative of infectious peritonitis, but it is
less so in dogs and swine than in other animals owing to their natural
antagonism to pus microbes. The operation should be attempted
extraperitoneally, the incision being made beneath the anterior
lumbar transverse processes and carried inward through the
sublumbar connective tissue. The renal artery will require ligature
with antiseptic catgut and all manipulations should be aseptic or
antiseptic. Even if successful, this operation leaves the subject in a
dangerous state, as in case of kidney disease at any future time, there
is no second kidney to compensate for the temporary loss of function
and uræmic poisoning is to be dreaded.
Apart from surgical measures the general treatment would be
largely the same as for acute infectious nephritis. As antiseptics
calcium sulphide, the different sulphites, copiaba, etc., will be
indicated.
 PERINEPHRITIS.

Definition. In cattle on low damp lands, acrid plants, sprain, blow, calculus, from
purulent nephritis, in anæmia. Symptoms: of nephritis, soiling of tail or prepuce,
albumen, pus or blood in urine, lameness, unilateral or bilateral, lumbar swelling,
in small animals fluctuation, history. Lesions: abscesses around kidney, under
capsule, intercommunicating. Treatment: as in purulent nephritis.

Suppuration in the connective tissue between the kidney and its

capsule is seen in cattle in low condition, on damp, unimproved soils
like undrained river bottoms and estuaries, abounding in acrid and
diuretic plants. Even among such animals it is rare and has probably
a directly exciting cause in a sprain or blow on the loins, or the
presence and movement of a renal calculus. It may extend from
suppurations in the substance of the kidney and to such extension
the weak or anæmic condition materially contributes. In man, in
which such conditions have been more frequently observed, a weak
or cachectic condition is considered as an essential accessory factor
along with the traumatic lesion (R. Harrison). Similar conditions
may be expected to bring about perinephritis in any one of our
domestic animals. The author has observed it especially on the low
lands on the banks of the Ouse in Yorkshire, England.
Symptoms. These are mainly those of nephritis in general,
shivering, stiff movement in the hind limbs, straddling, frequent
passage of urine, straining, difficulty in lying down and rising,
tenderness of the loins, dropping when mounted, groaning when
turned in a short circle. If the suppuration communicates with the
pelvis of the kidney there may be, in females, soiling of the tail, and
in males of the prepuce. Blood may be passed with the urine, and pus
cells and albumen are found when it is examined. If one kidney only
is affected, there is lameness in the corresponding hind limb, the
special feature being inability to extend it backward. A swelling on
the one side of the loins, and beneath the lumbar transverse
processes just posterior to the last rib, is likely to be a marked
symptom, and if this persists and is especially prominent at one
point, an exploratory incision or puncture will detect the presence of
the pus. Fluctuation can rarely be detected, yet in small animals with
very flaccid abdomen, the swollen, tender kidney and even
fluctuation should be detected at times. The history of the case, the
low, damp pasturage, the access to acrid plants, the alimentation
with hay or grain covered with cryptogams, the fact of an injury and
the low, weak, anæmic condition of the animal should contribute to a
satisfactory diagnosis.
Lesions. In bovine kidneys affected in this way we have found
general inflammation and exudation around the entire kidney and
inside the capsule, with numerous small abscesses, in many
instances communicating with each other. They may extend through
the capsule and invade surrounding organs.
Treatment. In the treatment of cases of this kind the general
principles of therapeutics for nephritis are about all that can be
attempted in the lower animals. Fomentations over the loins are
especially desirable as a means of relieving the suffering, and
moderating inflammatory action. To the same end is the allowance of
plenty of pure water as a diluent. Then the various agents that
antagonize suppuration may be thought of, and some one selected
for use. Beside the antisuppurants already mentioned one may use
copiaba, cubebs, or turpentine in small doses, salicylates, or the
sulphide or sulphite of calcium. Surgical interference by puncture or
incision and antiseptic irrigation can only be thought of when the
abscess is single and circumscribed; never when the whole periphery
of the organ is involved. In the latter case the only rational surgery
would be the desperate resort of the removal of the entire kidney.
 PYELITIS. PYELONEPHRITIS. INFLAMMATION
OF THE RENAL PELVIS.

Definition. Causes: primary from vegetable irritants in food, toxins, cryptogams,

pelvic calculus, strongylus gigas; secondary from renal calculus, parasite, tubular
urethral or vesical infection, infecting deposits, metastasis. Symptoms: as in
nephritis, pus, blood, or albumen in urine, tender, arched loins, purulent polyuria,
with spheroidal epithelium. Diagnosis. Lesions: inflammation, calculus, etc., in
pelvis. Treatment: pure water, sodium bicarbonate, antiseptics, balsams,
fomentations, piperazin, extraction of calculus.

Suppurative inflammation of the mucosa lining the renal pelvis

may occur in the acute or chronic form.
Causes. It may be either primary or secondary. As a primary
disease it may be the result of poisoning by irritant diuretics such as
cantharides, turpentine, colchicum or balsams, or shoots of the
coniferæ, it may be due to the passage of the irritant products of
cryptogams found in musty fodder or grain, or it may come from the
irritation caused by the toxins of bacteria developed in the system or
in food or drink. Cases that develop from the irritation of a pelvic
calculus or precipitate, and from the presence of the strongylus gigas
(in dogs) may also be placed in this class.
As secondary causes are those in which the inflammation
starting in the uriniferous tubes extends down to and implicates the
pelvis, and the still more frequent instances of extension of purulent
infection upward from the ureter, bladder or prostate, so as to
involve the pelvis. So in blocking of the urethra by strongylus,
stricture, clot or calculus, and in spasm of the sphincter vesicæ, the
delayed urine is liable to undergo fermentation with evolution of
ammonia, and not only the bladder but the ureter and renal pelvis
may suffer. Again, the occurrence in the kidney of the hyperplasia of
cancer, glanders (horse) and tuberculosis (cow) may be the direct
cause of pyelitis. Similarly foci of infection in the kidney may be
found in distemper in the dog, and in the contagious pneumonia and
influenza of the horse. In man infection from the bowel through the
migration of the bacillus coli communis to the devitalized kidney and
contents in hydronephrosis, has been traced, and the liability to this
must be still greater after the surgical insertion of the ureters in the
rectum as a substitute for the obliterated bladder and urethra. Again,
in the intra-arterial migrations of the strongylus (sclerostoma)
armatus pus microbes may be carried to the kidney and reach the
pelvis.
Symptoms. These are in the main those of nephritis with marked
rigors. The presence of pus cells and albumen in the urine may come
from suppuration in the substance of the kidney itself, or sub-
capsular abscess opening into the pelvis, or it may come from
cystitis, prostatitis or urethritis. The special stiffness and tenderness
of the loins, polyuria in which the liquid is purulent, but free from
uriniferous casts, and in which it is charged with the spheroidal
epithelium of the pelvis (not the columnar of the tubules), may afford
presumptive evidence of pyelitis. But pyelitis is usually combined
with nephritis or cystitis and the complications prevent diagnosis. In
some cases the urine is scanty and strongly albuminous, and in
others a round calculus will block, at intervals, the opening of the
ureter giving rise to obstruction of the flow from that kidney and the
occurrence of violent renal colic lasting until the stone is again
dislodged backward.
Diagnosis cannot often be certain. Purulent urine, with a
considerable number of the spheroidal cells of the pelvis, and the
general signs of nephritis may be taken as diagnostic. A great excess
of such epithelial cells would on the contrary point to cystitis.
Lesions. In the early stages the mucosa of the pelvis is congested,
red, and sometimes, with calculus, hæmorrhagic. Later it becomes
thickened by exudate, which fills also the submucous tissue. In some
instances the pelvis is distended by an impacted calculus, in others
the obstruction of the ureter by an impacted calculus or a swelling
has led to overdistension of the pelvis, and ammoniacal fermentation
of its contents. Coincident inflammatory lesions of the kidney,
ureter, or bladder are common.
 Prognosis is not hopeful. Where it has resulted as a descending
infection from the kidney, the severity of the primary lesion renders
the case a grave one, while if it has been an ascending inflammation
from the bladder it is no less so.
Treatment. Diluent (watery) diuretics are especially indicated.
Pure water may be given ad libitum. To this may be added if
necessary moderate doses of bicarbonate of soda or potash with such
non-irritating antiseptics as salicylic acid, salicylate of soda, sulphite
of soda, sulphide of calcium, quinia or chamomile. Trasbot even
recommends small doses of vegetable astringents, balsam of Tolu, or
Peru or of Copiaba, or oil of turpentine or tar water. Apart from
simple water, the diuretic agents may be used with greater freedom if
the solid parts of the kidney are little or not at all involved and if the
urine contains no casts of the uriniferous tubes.
Benefit may also be obtained from fomentations, or cupping of the
loins, and even from the application of mustard and counter-
irritants.
If the active symptoms subside the continued use of tonics would
be indicated, especially quinia, and also of the balsams with the view
at once of antisepsis and toning up of the mucous membrane.
In case of calculus of the pelvis surgical extraction is virtually the
only resort, though a very desperate one. Its increase may be
retarded or prevented by antisepsis, a liberal use of water, and the
exhibition of piperazin or some of the essential oils.
 CHRONIC NEPHRITIS.

Cases destroyed as eating their heads off. Causes: sequel of acute nephritis, swill,
lead, experimentally, microbian invasions, toxins, metastatic embolism, extension
from aortic disease, sclerostoma, nitrogenous overfeeding, toxins of putrid food, or
cryptogams, valvular disease of the right heart, rheumatism, heaves, calculus,
starvation, debility, retention of urine. Symptoms: emaciation, flabby muscles, lack
of vigor, stiff loins and quarters, short step, straddling, fatigue under slight
exertion, groaning in trot, or in turning, droops when mounted, slow to rise on
hind limbs, poor capricious appetite, anæmia, stocked legs, dropsies, urine of
lower density, albuminous, with granular epithelium and casts, abundant in early
stages, scanty with weakened heart and degenerated kidneys. Secondary
palpitations, bronchial catarrh, pneumonia, hemorrhage, stupor, lethargy, vertigo,
etc. Lesions: recent cases, kidney large, cortex firm, capsule adherent, with
granular fatty debris, and tubular casts; old cases, kidney contracted, fibroid,
glomeruli and tubules atrophied. Bronchitis, pneumonia, hepatic cirrhosis, heart
enlarged, fatty, dilated, insufficient valves. Prognosis unfavorable. Treatment:
gentle exercise, warmth, succulent food, amylaceous, tonics, iron, bitters, mineral
acids, heart tonics, for polyuria bromides or iodides, balsams, pilocarpin,
fomentations or sinapisms to loins.

Chronic nephritis has received little attention in the lower animals

for various reasons. The lower animals largely escape the causative
factors of alcoholism and chronic lead and copper poisoning, and
when suffering from any chronic affection that disqualifies the
animal for use and renders it anæmic and emaciated it is naturally
sacrificed to save the cost of maintenance. In spite of this a
considerable number of cases have been recorded in horses, and
cattle and especially in dogs and cats.
Causes. Cases of acute nephritis sometimes improve and give
promise of recovery without completing the work of convalescence.
Trasbot notes such cases in the dog, and Dickinson in the ox.
Alcoholic nephritis and degenerations are to be sought for especially