Death is not one of the usual results of this affection, but a recent surgical writer (Keppler[4]) has called attention to cases where long-continued dyspeptic symptoms, with constant pain and the chagrin and melancholy due to inability to work, have been followed by death from exhaustion, and nothing except a movable kidney has been found at the autopsy. [Footnote 4: _Arch. für Klin. Chirurg._, 1879.] There can be no doubt that in many cases the symptoms are more severe than might be supposed from the ordinary descriptions, and are very unfairly characterized as hysterical. On the other hand, many cases are attended with but the mildest form of the symptoms just described, and the patients, ignorant of any tumor either from its discomfort or from having felt it, live in health and comfort for many years. DIAGNOSIS.--The diagnosis of this condition, if the physician keeps in mind the possibility of its occurrence, is usually not difficult. In many cases a tumor has been felt by the patient which when called to the attention of the physician is recognized by its shape. In some cases in thin persons the form of the kidney, even to its hilus with the strongly-beating artery, can be made out. It glides easily from between the fingers, and can be moved more or less remotely from its normal position, to which, however, it returns without difficulty, especially when the patient assumes the recumbent position. The excursions are of course limited to a certain length of radius, of which the origin of the renal vessels is the centre, and seldom go much beyond the median line toward the side opposite to that on which the movable organ belongs. The usual statement of text-books, that a depression or lessened resistance is to be felt in the loins of the side from which the kidney is absent, and a diminution of the normal dulness, which returns again when the organ is replaced, rests, as regards the majority of cases, rather upon theoretical considerations than on actual observation. The thickness of the lumbar muscles, upon which the kidney rests, is such that the dulness on percussion is not capable of much change. In most persons the outer limit of dulness in this region is not that of the outer edge of the kidney, but of the extensor dorsi communis. Palpation and percussion therefore in the renal region are not likely to be of much value in diagnosis, although an occasional case appears to justify the ordinary statement. The hand-and-knee position described above would be more likely than any other to show an existing depression.