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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    and d}'sentery are often co-existent, as are liver abscess and remittent fever, and that one may follow closely or precede the other ; yet the diseases are independent, though, doubtless, they aggravate each other.” Indeed, when we consider that Europeans in India are constantly exposed to the causes of both these diseases, the wonder is that they do not oftener suffer from both at the same time. It is now universally admitted that there is no tendency to hepatic abscess in the dysentery of temperate climates. The late Dr. Bily stated that, although dysentery was constantly present amongst the inmates of Millbank prison, he never found it complicated with inflammation or abscess of the liver. Dr. Abercrombie, who had a large experience of dysentery in Great Britain, only found the liver affected in one or two chronic cases. During the Crimean war, dysentery was one of the greatest scourges of the British army, yet Dr. Lyons, pathologist to the force, only records one case of abscess of the liver following dysentery. More recently, Niemeyer and Finger, iu 311 autopsies on patients who had died of dysentery, did not find a single instance of abscess of the liver. These, and many similar, facts render it certain that only a very small proportion of the cases of hepatic abscess seen in tropical countries are dysenteric in their origin. Tropical and dysenteric abscesses of the liver differ entirely in their etiology and pathology. As has been previously stated, when hepatic exhaustion has been established, the terminal branches of the hepatic artery are more or less blocked by dead blood corpuscles. Under these circumstances, the vessels quickly lose their tone, and become dilated. The resulting pressure and impairment of nutrition soon affect the liver cells. The cells at first become oederaatous, and then commence
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