The discovery of the nature of the spleen : from an investigation of the lateral homologies of the liver, stomach, and intestinal canal / by Henry R. Silvester.

  • Silvester, Henry R. (Henry Robert), 1829-1908.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discovery of the nature of the spleen : from an investigation of the lateral homologies of the liver, stomach, and intestinal canal / by Henry R. Silvester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    •whether the liver may not in reality be regarded as a combination of two organs ; viz., a blood-gland, similar to the spleen, and a biliary apparatus combined together. Ruysch appears to have been one of the first anatomists who classified the liver with the thyroid, supra-renal cap- sules, and lymphatic glands as a vascular or blood-gland —' glandula sanguinea.' The action of the ductless glands —that of extracting material from the blood elaborating it, and, instead of eliminating it by ducts, returning it into the blood by means of a venous or lymphatic absorp- tion is no doubt, to a certain extent, imitated by the liver, the largest secreting gland in the body; for in the embryo tlie liver is indeed a true blood-gland. (Carpenter and Power). Without laying much stress here upon the compara- tive size of this gland, which is by far the most bulky of the abdominal viscera, we shall pass on to consider its anatomical and physiological characteristics so far as they elucidate our subject; and the first thing which attracts attention when considering the liver is its double vascular supply, and this alone is sufhcicnt to lead to the conjec- ture that it is compound in its nature, for it differs in this I'espect from all the other abdominal viscera. It will be remembered that the hepatic artery, the branch of the coeliac axis which corresponds with the splenic, is distributed to the proper coat of the liver, to the coats of the various ducts and vessels, and to the capsule of Glisson, and forms jilexuses upon the elaborate inter- lobular cellular structure; and that it probably terminates in the portal vein by the intervention of a capillary net- work ; and that, in addition to this, the portal vein is dis- tributed to the hepatic lobules after the manner of an artery ; and that it is the portal vein which, inider ordi- nary circumstances, is the main source of the biliary sup- ])ly. It may, however, here be suggested that this is not conclusive; for there is anotlier organ in the body, namely, the lung,- which also has an arterial and a venous circula- tion, tiie venous circulation being distributed after tiie manner of an arterial. Now, the objection may be an- swered, and be made to give additional weight to the theory of the compound nature of the liver, by considering the nature of the lung, and tracing its progressive development in the animal series. The bronchial vessels which supply