Margaret Mylle was a researcher in the physiology of the kidney and a long-term collaborator of Carl W. Gottschalk. Their work used renal micropuncture to investigate fluid conditions within individual parts of the nephron, rather than inferring every process from the final urine.[ref]
Carl W. Gottschalk by Maurice B. Burg. Early micropuncture research: collaboration and local measurements
Their 1959 study compared osmolality in samples from renal tubules, collecting ducts, the Loop of Henle and small renal vessels. Oil-filled glass micropipettes collected tiny fluid samples, whose freezing-point depression supplied a concentration measurement.[ref]
The illuminating feature is the specificity of the sampling site. A high concentration in final urine does not identify where concentration developed. Comparing local fluid with blood plasma, and with fluid elsewhere in the kidney, turns an overall output into a spatial test of a physiological mechanism. The joint experiments helped connect microscopic anatomy with the concentrating function of the whole organ.
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