Perinephritis apparently has not been recognized as a possible cause of arterial hypertension. Occasionally hypertension has been recorded for patients whose renal parenchyma from one cause or another has been chronically compressed. Any genetic relationship seems, however, to have been ignored.
During the course of experiments designed to prevent the development of renal cortical collateral circulation, cellophane was tried because it was believed that it would cause little damage to the tissues. It was soon apparent that arterial hypertension had developed in the animals in which cellophane had been wrapped around the kidneys. Examination showed them to be enclosed within a fibrocollagenous hull from 3 to 4 mm. thick. The cellophane had been fragmented and taken up, chiefly by the omentum.
The kidney bulged from the hull when it was cut, indicating that the parenchyma was held fast under tension.
The reaction of tissue to cellophane is extraordinary. Contact for relatively short periods (three to thirty days) is enough to evoke a proliferative reaction which continues for a time, at least, after the cellophane has been dispersed by the omentum.