Hepatitis and hepatic abscess : their ætiology, diagnosis and treatment / by G. Harrison Younge.

  • Younge, G. Harrison.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hepatitis and hepatic abscess : their ætiology, diagnosis and treatment / by G. Harrison Younge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    same reason chills are particularly dangerous, as the system seems to have lost its power of reaction, and cannot rapidly recover from their effects. In the tropics chill mainly attacks the liver because there, as I have tried to show, there is a special predisposition to hepatic diseases. The liver, being the weakest point, usually gives way when any sudden strain is thrown on the system. In the older works on diseases of the liver, much stress is laid on the connection between dysenteric ulceration of the large intestine and abscess of the liver. Owing principally to the teaching of Sir J. Annesley and Dr. Budd, it was at one time believed that all abscesses of the liver, which were not traumatic in origin, arose from absorption of septic matter from an ulcerated intes- tine. The length to which this idea was carried may be judged of by the fact that one author referred a large abscess of the liver to “ a minute cicatrix in the bowel so small that it might easily have been overlooked.’’ Even in the present day much stress is frequently laid on the connection between dysentery and hepatic abscess. It is, however, of great importance that we should fully recognise the fact that only a very small percentage of cases of abscess of the liver in the tropics is duo to dysentery; and that we should fully appreciate the difference in the pathology of dysenteric and tropical abscesses. In the cases of hepatic abscess collected by Dr. Parkes, cnly 21-74 per cent, of the patients had pre- viously suffered from dysentery. In 300 cases of hepatic abscess recorded by Dr. Waring, only 27 per cent, of the patients had had dysentery. Evan these figures, I believe, place the proportion of dysenteric abscesses of the liver too high, for an abscess of the liver may be coincident with an attack of dysentery, and yet the dis- eases may have no etiological connection with one . another. Sir Joseph Fayrer states that ‘ liver abscess