The Renal Lesion of Experimental Cantharidin Poisoning

Although the study of experimental nephritis by physiological methods shows that the most striking effect of cantharidin is injury of the blood vessels, the great abundance of mitotic figures in the tubular epithelium in the stage of repair points to an equally widespread and severe epithelial injury. Caution must therefore be observed in ascribing the physiological disturbances of kidney function caused by cantharidin as due exclusively to a vascular injury, and in regarding cantharidin nephritis as a pure type of vascular nephritis.