On diseases of the liver / by George Budd.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On diseases of the liver / by George Budd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    opening into the intestinal canal, in almost the lowest animals, and have thus furnished the surest testimony that can be given to the importance of an organ ; namely, its all but universal presence in the animal kingdom. Notwithstanding this, while the press has been teeming wit works on the diseases of the Nervous System, of the Chest, of the Kidney, of the Skin, comparatively few have appeared of late years, on diseases of the Liver. This, assuredly, is not owing to any falling off in our sense of their importance, but to the vague and unsatisfactory state of our knowledge respecting them. The scientific precision lately given to our knowledge of many other diseases by the employment of new methods of investiga- tion, has created a demand for more exact infonnation, in every branch of medical inquiry, than pathologists have been able to communicate on diseases of the liver. The unsatisfactory state of our knowledge of these discuses will scarcely be wondered at, if we reflect that many causes have conspired to render the study of them peculiarly difficult. One of the most influential, perhaps, is, that the colour and tex- ture of the liver are such as to make it difficult, with the imperfect means of research hitherto employed, to detect and define, m tie dead body, the various effects of disease, unless where this has gone on to disorganisation, or complete change of structure. In an organ whose texture is spongy, as the lung, disease pro- duces such striking changes, that we can at once distogms eir different forms, and thus learn to connect them with the symp- toms observed during life; but in organs naturally solid and also nearly of the colour of blood, as the liver and the kidney these changes, and especially the traces of the vanous kinds o congestion and inflammation, arc far less obvious, and to detect and discriminate them, requires a knowledge of inUmate structime which has only lately been obtained, and, even with that knowledge, a very close and minute inspection. . , , j- In the case of the Iddney, the impediment which these con i- tions offer to the morbid anatomist is weU illustrated by fact, that a disease so common and so fatal as granu ar ege neration of this organ, and signalized during life ’J sTOptoms as general dropsy and albummous mine, . to immortalize, by its diseovery the name of a Imng and that even now, notwitlistandmg the interest it has excited