Action of mercury on the liver / [T. Lauder Brunton].

  • Brunton, T. Lauder (Thomas Lauder), 1844-1916.
Date:
[1873]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Action of mercury on the liver / [T. Lauder Brunton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    disappearance from the eyes of the yellowish tinge -which seems as if it only required to be somewhat deepened to become jaundice, and the coincident appearance of bile in the stools after a mercurial purgative, pointed to as proofs that too much bile in the blood is (partly at least) the cause of biliousness, since with its removal from the system the symptoms dis- appear. So long as it was supposed that bile was formed in the blood, and only separated from it by the liver, such a view as this might meet with ready acceptance; but how are we to reconcile it with the doctrine of most physiologists, that bile is not separated from the blood by the liver, but is formed within that organ itself? Fortunately, this is not difficult, for Schiff has shown that we have been latterly accustomed to take too narrow a view of the functions of the liver, and that it separates bile from the blood, or, as we may term it, excretes, as well as forms or secretes it.* This he did by tying the ductus choledochus in dogs, and putting a canula into the gall- bladder, so that he could collect the whole of the bile secreted by the liver. Immediately after the operation, the flow of bile was abundant, but in the course of half-an-hour it became greatly diminished, and remained so, never again reaching the amount at first observed. This curious result Schiff found to be due to the bile being all removed from the body by the canula, instead of passing, as it normally does, into the duo- denum, whence it is reabsorbed into the blood, and again ex- creted by the liver. In the first half hour after the fistula w as made, the liver was excreting bile as well as forming it, and so more flowed from it than in any subsequent period when it was only forming it. Whenever Schiff introduced bile into the blood, either by injecting it directly into the veins, or putting it into the duo- denum, stomach, or areolar tissue, the flow of bile from the liver was at once increased, but again diminished when the additional bile had been excreted. By another series of experiments, he also found that not only can a certain quantity of bile be pre- sent in the blood without producing jaundice, but that it * Pfliiger's Archiv., 1870, p. 598, and Lussana, Lo Sperimentale, torn, xjrix, 1872, p. 337.